Winter 2017: Bridging the Gap

HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW

HARVARD’S SILENCE ON TITLE IX

HOPE AFTER HEARBREAK

INTERVIEW: MIKA BRZEZINSKI & JOE SCARBOROUGH

VOLUME XLIV NO. 4, WINTER 2017 HARVARDPOLITICS.COM

BRIDGING THE GAP

HARVARDPOLITICS.COM

BRIDGING THE GAP This issue’s cover topic was proposed by Matthew Rossi

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Internet, Inc. Alicia Zhang

15 Concrete Beauty Lauren Anderson

12 Isolated Matthew Rossi

20 Not Exactly Rocket Science Hank Sparks

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CULTURE

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Food for Thought Cindy Jung

35 The Zealy Daguerreotypes Hadley DeBello and Esteban Arellano

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Harvard Silent on Title IX Will Imbrie-Moore

38 Replacing Newsfeeds for Newspapers Jessica Boutchie

UNITED STATES

INTERVIEWS

17 Unity in Diversity Meena Venkataramanan

40 Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinkski Connor Schoen

20 Not Exactly Rocket Science Hank Sparks 22 Hope After Heartbreak Wyatt Hurt 26 We(Chat) The People Hillary McLauchlin

WORLD

42 Roger Stone Humberto Juárez Rocha

ENDPAPER 44 A Night in Naples Samuel Plank

26 We(Chat) The People Hillary McLauchlin 28 Law and Justice Natalie Dabkowski 30 The Current State of Yemen Connor Schoen 35 The Zealy Daguerreotypes Hadley DeBello and Esteban Arellano

32 The Road to the Middle Kingdom Perry Arrasmith

Email: president@harvardpolitics.com. ISSN 0090-1032. Harvard Political Review. All rights reserved. Image credits: Facebook: 40- Jake Tapper. Flickr: 1- Elvert Barnes; 1- United States Department of Defense; 14- Elvert Barnes; 25- Gopal Vijayaraghavan; 28- Nicolas Nova; 37- PunkToad. Pexels: 23. Photographer: 5- Elmer Vivas Portillo. Unplash: 14- Kimberly Richards, 34- Gabriel Garcia Marengo. Pixabay: 24- xoracio.

The United States Navy: 8. Wikimedia: Cover- Jamelle Bouie; 1- Balatokyo; 1- Jim Bowen; 11- Kyknoord; 20- Ipankonin; 32; 34; 42- Keith Allison; 44- chensiyuan.

WINTER 2017 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 1

FROM THE PRESIDENT

HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW

Bridging the Gap

A Nonpartisan Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Est. 1969—Vol. XLIV, No. 4

EDITORIAL BOARD PRESIDENT: Ali Hakim PUBLISHER: Peter Wright MANAGING EDITOR: Samuel Plank ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR: Quinn Mulholland ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR: Samuel Kessler STAFF DIRECTOR: Ari Berman SENIOR COVERS EDITOR: Sal DeFrancesco ASSOCIATE COVERS EDITOR: Nicolas Yan SENIOR U.S. EDITOR: Chad Borgman ASSOCIATE U.S. EDITOR: Henry Brooks ASSOCIATE U.S. EDITOR: Drew Pendergrass SENIOR WORLD EDITOR: Jacob Link ASSOCIATE WORLD EDITOR: Derek Paulhus ASSOCIATE WORLD EDITOR: Akshaya Annapragada SENIOR CULTURE EDITOR: Russell Reed SENIOR CAMPUS EDITOR: Akash Wasil ASSOCIATE CAMPUS EDITOR: Katherine Ho INTERVIEWS EDITOR: Martin Berger BUSINESS MANAGER: Jennifer Horowitz ASSOCIATE BUSINESS MANAGER: Enrique Rodriguez SENIOR DESIGN EDITOR: Kyle McFadden ASSOCIATE DESIGN EDITOR: Victoria Berzin ASSOCIATE DESIGN EDITOR: Eliot Harrison SENIOR MULTIMEDIA EDITOR: Sebastian Reyes ASSOCIATE MULTIMEDIA EDITOR: James Blanchfield SENIOR TECH DIRECTOR: Richa Chaturvedi ASSOCIATE TECH DIRECTOR: Alisha Ukani ASSOCIATE TECH DIRECTOR: Will Finigan

STAFF Perry Abdulkadir, Victor Agbafe, Perry Arrasmith, Marie Becker, Devon Black, Evan Bonsall, Beverly Brown, Jiafeng Chen, Pedro Luis Cunha Farias, Justin Curtis, Ashish Dahal, Nick Danby, Sunaina Danziger, Hadley DeBello, Sophie DiCara, Casey Durant, Austin Eder, Steven Espinoza, Adam Friedman, Daniel Friedman, Miro Furtado, Melissa Gayton, Jay Gopalan, David Gutierrez, Olivia Herrington, Thomas Huling, Chimaoge Ibe, Michael Jasper, Cindy Jung, Matthew Keating, Daniel Kenny, Andrew Kim, Kieren Kresevic, Amelia Lamp, Jose Larios, Ashiley Lee, Elton Lossner, Elizabeth Manero, Patrick McClanahan, Olivia McGinnis, Jake McIntyre, Ayush Midha, Andrew Morley, Erica Newman-Corre, Iriowen Ojo, Nadya Okamoto, Mfundo Radebe, Anna Raheem, Anne Raheem, Alyssa Resar, Chico Payne, Darwin Peng, Juliet Pesner, Stefan Petrovic, Lily Piao, Allison Piper, Tess Saperstein, Lizzy Schick, Matthew Shaw, Audrey Sheehy, Wright Smith, Nick StaufferMason, Gloria Su, Anirudh Suresh, Sarah Tisdall, Richard Tong, Rachel Tropp, Nico Tuccillo, Derek Wang, Katie Weiner, Joseph Winters, Jenna Wong, Sarah Wu, Emily Zauzmer, Catherine Zheng, Anna Zhou, Andrew Zucker

ADVISORY BOARD Jonathan Alter Richard L. Berke Carl Cannon E.J. Dionne, Jr.

Ron Fournier Walter Isaacson Whitney Patton Maralee Schwartz

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Every morning, as I begin my day groggily stumbling out of my brutalist 20th-century concrete building, I can walk in either of two directions: north or south. North takes me up DeWolfe Street, which traces the eastern boundary of Harvard Square and leads me to the center of the university’s campus. South takes me across Weeks Footbridge, which has been transporting students over the Charles River to Boston since 1927. And irrespective of which direction my feet choose on a particular day, odds are that my fingers will be unconsciously swiping through dozens of online articles, traveling on an information superhighway that links devices in Cambridge to ones in Cambodia (and everywhere in between). In my morning stupor, it can be easy to forget the degree to which my daily routines rely on physical structures which I take for granted—sidewalks, bridges, carbon fiber cables, and the like.

Infrastructure, no matter how mundane or complex, is a fact of life for virtually everyone. And the physical spaces we navigate constantly shape our social and political experiences.

In turn, social and political processes determine the function and form of our public spaces and amenities. Indeed, infrastructure is one of a dwindling number of issues that it seems both major American parties can get behind these days. During his campaign, President Donald Trump called for fiscal incentives to boost infrastructure investment, infamously likening New York City’s LaGuardia Airport to a “third world country.” Meanwhile, in 2017, Democrats in each chamber of Congress have pushed for several multibillion dollar deals to increase federal investments in highways, energy grids, and water systems.

It is in appreciation of the unsung importance that infrastructure

plays in our lives that we present to you Bridging the Gap. In the following pages, HPR writers explore infrastructural landscapes from throughout the world. Alicia Zhang discusses the role of U.S. tech giants in expanding Internet access in much of sub-Saharan Africa. Matthew Rossi highlights Alaska’s barren infrastructure and how it leaves some of the state’s most vulnerable communities out in the cold. Finally, Lauren Anderson reminds us of the importance of aesthetics in city planning and infrastructure design.

Bridging the Gap is the fourth and final issue published under the HPR’s 49th masthead. It has been the culmination of a whirlwind year for our publication. Between launching a new website, initiating a quarterly podcast, and diving into data journalism, the magazine’s staff has maintained our tireless efforts to inform and engage our readers with stories and analysis that cannot be found elsewhere. As always, I thank the staff for the diligence and care that went into producing this magazine. And I thank you, our readers, for picking up a copy.

As I sign off on the HPR’s pages for the final time, I’m left feeling sentimental, yet proud of the ways in which we’ve been able to innovate and grow over these past three years.

And I’m overwhelmed by an optimism about what is to come under our 50th masthead.

Farewell, and happy reading.

Ali Hakim President

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Disordered Eating at Harvard Cindy Jung

Anna Biggs WINTER 2017 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 3

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M

y junior year of high school marked the beginning of my preoccupation with eating. I developed stringent standards that would keep me under a certain weight.

Even before my junior year, I had a problem with how I looked in a sports bra, or my perceived “medium” size compared to my flat-chested friends who seemed to have no flab even when they were sitting.

I am still amazed when I reflect on the dramatic food restrictions that my destructive body image caused me to impose on myself. I did not forgo my ritual of a hefty meal and ice cream at Friendly’s every Saturday after my lacrosse game, and I still participated in ‘milk and cookies’ during Wednesday night dorm functions. Eating was satisfying, and I wanted to embrace my natural cravings. But every time I gave into my desires, I withered in self-hatred for not having the discipline to say no to food and sabotaging my goal to become skinny. I resorted to purging; it appeared to be my only recourse, as I could not escape my draconian eating expectations nor the irresistible lure of food.

My abusive relationship with food continued into college, yet there were differences at Harvard. My problems with eating manifested in the opposite extreme—I adhered to an unrelenting eating regime, to the extent that eating one more teaspoon of oatmeal than I thought was “safe” to consume for the day would burden me with extreme guilt. I was hardly aware of my problems. My clothes kept getting looser over freshman fall, and people would occasionally tell me things like, “you weigh nothing.” But I looked at the mirror with a distorted image of myself. I was shocked at my mom’s horror towards my thinness when I returned home for Christmas break.

I am now in my junior year, but my ups and downs since my time at Harvard began are too painful and tiresome to recount.

Despite my significantly improved eating habits, I still struggle to stay away from the scale, or to stop strategizing my daily food intake to comply with my draconian metrics. I do not know when I will be completely free from the fear of gaining weight.

Due to my own personal experience with eating and body image, I started looking into eating disorders at Harvard–hoping to start an honest dialog around an issue which has affected countless students on this campus.

STUDENT REFLECTIONS ON HUDS The lack of comprehensive data on Harvard students’ eating habits, especially on how HUDS influences them, prevents any conclusive recommendations for creating a better environment for students with eating disorders. Regardless, conversations with clinical experts and students who have had a history of disordered eating reveal some important insights. These responses warrant more extensive education on eating disorders, nutrition, and positive body image for the entire student population. Most importantly, there must be greater efforts to foster an environment where students can comfortably talk through issues with eating and trust their peers to empathize, so that those who need help seek out treatment and consultation. Although these administrative initiatives are imperative, it is still important to

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assess the influence of the dining hall on student eating, since the space serves as the primary food provider for most undergraduates. Student comments that focused on eating struggles experienced in the dining hall frequently highlighted the unlimited swipe system, which leads to decreased control over portion size, and the need for “healthier” options like less fried foods and more fresh fruits and vegetables. Many also pointed out a convergence of factors, most often short dinner hours and the predominance of high-carb and high-sugar brain break options like cereal, as reasons for their compunction about “eating badly.”

In particular, students who have suffered from eating disorders tended to emphasize their reactions to the unlimited availability of food as freshmen, whether they were affected by the prevalence of guilt-inducing foods or perceivably “healthy” options that thus enabled them to overeat.

Andie Turner ‘20, who came to Harvard with a history of orthorexia, a fixation with righteous eating and an adherence to an extremely rigid eating style, told the HPR: “I kind of went the opposite of restricting myself and [ended up] over-indulging in food. I would just go into Annenberg and load up my plate with foods I thought were “healthy” and gorge on them until I was uncomfortably full.” She attributed the change in her eating habits freshman year to the buffet-style and absence of detailed labels in the dining hall.

Karen Maldonado ‘18, a former co-director of Eating Concerns and Hotline Outreach who recovered from her eating disorder during college, was similarly overwhelmed by Annenberg. “As someone who struggled a lot with things like guilt, having cereal right there, or an ice cream machine right there, became emotionally overwhelming.”

LIMITED REMEDIES TO DISORDERED EATING National statistics on the status of eating disorders across colleges suggest that a large number of Harvard undergraduates likely wrestle with a range of eating concerns. Whereas the new freedom and responsibilities of college life are correlated to a rise in mental health problems, the social pressure to make friends, have romantic relationships, and achieve academically can lead to maladaptive coping mechanisms in the form of disordered eating,” according to a 2013 survey by the National Eating Disorders Association. College students are at an increased risk of eating disorders also because they fall in a period of development in which disordered eating is likely to arise, resurface, or worsen for many young men and women. Full-blown eating disorders typically begin between 18 and 21 years of age.

Clinical knowledge on triggering elements of eating disorders corroborate common themes in student perspectives. “Intervention [for binging disorder] starts with controlling access to something that is a typical binge food for them, ice cream, peanut butter, cereal, etc. And over time, when people have managed to reduce bingeing, you reintroduce those foods to their diet. So, a dining hall could just make that [process] more difficult because you have less control over what foods are avail-

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able” explained Rebecca Shingleton, a Postdoctoral Fellow at VA Boston Healthcare System, in an interview with the HPR. But on the flip side, she explained that for someone who may be trying to gain weight or expose themselves to a larger variety of foods, perhaps as a part of their treatment, having access to a vast array of foods in the dining hall can be very helpful in accessing different types of food.

Shingleton’s description of both the costs and benefits of introducing a wide array of foods to students struggling with eating disorders highlights an important point: strategies that may help certain students who struggle with eating concerns may harm others. Therefore, it is particularly difficult to make general claims about how certain HUDS policies perpetuate or reduce the impact of eating disorders.

ADMINISTRATIVE SUPPORT FOR EATING CONCERNS Eating disorders necessitate intensive medical help, but the undergraduate populations that suffer from a range of disordered eating also deserve support and warrant treatment.

Nationally, 45-55 percent of undergraduates had shape or weight concerns above normative body image dissatisfaction, 25 percent engaged in some level of dietary restraint and 21 percent reported experiencing objective binge episodes. But a much smaller percentage reported clinically significant levels of eating disorder symptoms. The rates of actual eating disorder diagnosis are lower because a diagnosis takes into account numerous components including weight and occurrence of binge and purge episodes.

The diverse spectrum of eating anxieties requires improved initiatives to address detrimental restrictive behavior at the sub-clinical level. Meeting these varied needs lies largely outside the purview of Harvard’s dining services. Harvard students can turn to Eating Concerns and Hotline Outreach, a group of undergraduate counselors who have specialized training to address concerns about exercising, body image, food, eating, and eating disorders, a team of dieticians at The Center for Wellness, and the eating disorder specialist at the HUHS counseling and mental health group, or make an appointment with a nutritionist without referrals. Off-campus resources include the Cambridge Eating Disorder Center, the Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders, Boston Student Eating Disorder Association, and McLean Hospital’s Klarman Eating Disorders Center.

The National Eating Disorders Association’s 2013 survey measured the frequency and perceived importance of a variety of programs and services on 165 colleges and universities in the United States and contained recommendations that could help Harvard support students with eating disorders.

Key findings highlighted the serious lack of screenings for eating disorders—a critical component of identifying those struggling and intervening early—and the unmet need for individuals on campus who are qualified to identify and refer students. Additionally, the results called for greater educational programming. The only eating disorder workshops at Harvard,

ECHO’s Body Image Workshop and Love Your Body day, are offered by demand and once a year, respectively. Moreover, Harvard does not offer programs on eating disorders during the annual National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, unlike 65.6 percent of campuses in the survey that reported doing so.

These workshops cultivate a love of the holistic self and help individuals make peace with food, and students would benefit from even more of them. Likewise, Harvard could offer campus-wide opportunities for eating-disorder screenings and appointments for individual psychotherapies. Another idea would be for nutritionists from HUHS to hold office hours, perhaps in collaboration with eating disorder specialists, to address students’ misconceptions about foods and weight gain, and encourage empowering frameworks for thinking about food.

Precautionary efforts and interventions should start early, from incorporating conversations about body image and eating into the Opening Days program. Consistent education workshops across the college—maybe even in the form of academic courses on eating disorders—would help students build healthy relationships with their bodies.

The success of current and proposed initiatives depends on students’ willingness to seek help, which is often hindered by a denial of the existence or seriousness of the problem and the stigma surrounding eating disorders. Alana Steinberg, the current co-Director of ECHO, told the HPR that “not eating to look good or pulling a trig because you ate too much are really normalized on this campus.” She continued that, “being vocal about an eating concern is something very difficult to do.”

Therefore, the greater challenge lies in creating an atmosphere in which talking about all categories of eating-related stresses are accepted and normalized. A critical, often overlooked, part of tackling the reticence around struggles with food is to raise awareness of disordered eating as a spectrum that is relevant to almost everyone who has a body and a relationship to it. Transforming campus discourse on eating disorders could begin with the administration’s public acknowledgement that food can sometimes induce anxiety.

Bolstering solidarity through these initiatives is key to motivating individuals to seek treatment. As Maldonado told the HPR, “Food is such a massive part of college life, the dining hall is such a center of college community, and yet we talk so little about our relationship to food, and how different that could be for people.”

For eating concerns at Harvard, ECHO is available at (617) 4958200 from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. nightly.

For eating concerns nationally, NEDA is available at (800) 9312237 from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday.

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HARVARD’S SILENCE ON TITLE IX

Will Imbrie-Moore

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O

n September 7, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced plans to reverse several Obama-era Title IX guidelines regarding sexual assault investigations at U.S. colleges and universities. Since then, Harvard students have received little assurance from their administration that protections for Harvard’s sexual assault victims are here to stay.

DeVos specifically revoked the Department of Education’s 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter—a landmark policy change establishing the preponderance of evidence standard for all colleges’ internal sexual assault investigations. In fact, it directly spurred Harvard’s 2014 policy shift to the preponderance of evidence standard—a reduction from the previously more strict “clear and convincing” standard. Now that the Department of Education no longer mandates this policy, many are asking: Will Harvard go back?

Harvard eventually must choose whether to side with legal purists, who tend to favor higher evidentiary standards, or antisexual assault activists, who are defending the current standard.

However, its noncommittal stance and lack of transparency alienate both sides and dismiss the importance of Title IX for its students.

HARVARD’S EMBATTLED HISTORY ON TITLE IX Even before the Obama administration’s new guidelines, the Harvard administration had been under consistent fire from students—especially undergraduates—about sexual assault issues.

For years, student activists from groups such as Our Harvard Can Do Better have been pushing the administration to provide more resources for sexual assault survivors and change its enforcement policies. Alongside the evidentiary standard debate, many student activists have long advocated for a change in Harvard’s consent policy—from banning “unwelcome conduct” to requiring “affirmative consent.”

Disapproval of Harvard’s Title IX policies extends beyond frustrated student activists. When Harvard announced the 2014 reduction to its evidentiary standard, 28 Harvard Law School professors condemned the decision in a Boston Globe op-ed, claiming the new procedures “lack the most basic elements of fairness and due process, are overwhelmingly stacked against the accused, and are in no way required by Title IX.” And in Washington, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has kept a watchful eye over Harvard. In 2014, Harvard Law School was found in violation of Title IX for its sexual harassment policies. Harvard is currently under three additional Office for Civil Rights investigations, as well as a Title IX lawsuit filed by a recent graduate.

FEDERAL POLICY AND HARVARD’S RESPONSE On September 7, Secretary DeVos gave a speech emphasizing her desire for more protections for the accused and criticized the Obama administration’s policies, saying, “if everything is harassment, then nothing is,” and, “the prior administration weaponized the Office for Civil Rights.” Later that day, during an interview with CBS News , she explicitly announced the Department of Education’s “intention to revoke or rescind” the Obama administration’s 2011 directive, which includes the “preponderance of evidence” evidentiary standard guideline.

Harvard’s response to DeVos’s speech was mild-mannered

and unsubstantial. Asked twice about DeVos’s remarks in a CBS News interview the following day, Harvard University president Drew Faust declined to comment directly on them. Instead, she discussed the general importance of sexual assault issues as well as Harvard’s “really robust” policy, saying, “I feel that we have a strong policy in place now that addresses [sexual assault].”

This is not typical of Faust, who has been politically active in the past—even lambasting Trump’s “cruel” revocation of DACA. The Harvard administration stayed silent on Title IX for the next two weeks. On September 24, two days after DeVos officially rescinded the Obama-era guidelines, a Harvard spokesperson announced that the administration was “reviewing” the change in Title IX policy.

Responding to outcry from student activists, Harvard University Title IX Officer Nicole Merhill issued a statement on September 27. She wrote, “The Title IX Office has heard from many community members expressing concerns ... Harvard’s Sexual and Gender-Based Harassment Policy and Procedures are grounded in the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and the 2001 Revised Sexual Harassment Guidance as well as Massachusetts laws ... all of which remain in place...” An attorney, Merhill leads the Title IX office at Harvard, but her legal claims here are dubious. While it is true that the VAWA and Massachusetts law have established important protections against sexual assault, they do not regulate the evidentiary standards that colleges use in investigations, which is the chief concern of activists opposing DeVos’s policy changes. In fact, Harvard only raised its standard of evidence to its current level as a direct result of the Obama administration’s 2011 guidelines. Merhill’s statement did not include any information about whether Harvard now intends to make any policy changes, such as lowering its standard of evidence. Five weeks later, Merhill wrote an op-ed with other Harvard administrators, stating that the University does not intend to make changes “at this time.” Following multiple correspondences, Merhill and a spokesperson for Harvard did not respond to the HPR’s request for comment.

Ultimately, Harvard’s uniquely muted and opaque attitude toward its Title IX policies contradict its supposed commitment to addressing sexual assault as one of the most serious issues on its campus.

OUTRAGE AND ACTIVISM CONTINUE Since DeVos’s announcement, activists on campus have been vigorously fighting back. Some penned an op-ed in the Harvard Crimson accusing the University of “complicity” with DeVos, some protested DeVos when she delivered a speech at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and many have been organizing their game plan for the path ahead.

On October 17, dozens of students gathered to discuss their frustration with the administration’s “silence” and coordinate their activism moving forward. Representatives from student organizations Our Harvard Can Do Better, the Harassment/Assault Law Student Team, and the Graduate Students Union, as well as a representative from Know Your IX, a national Title IX advocacy program, spoke at the event. The students were proud of their advocacy work—even taking some credit for the current preponderance of evidence standard—but the meeting was largely focused on criticizing rape culture, the Trump administration, and the Harvard administration, as well as discussing

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“While the law professors and administrators who oppose the preponderance of evidence standard have avoided this kind of outwardly visible activism, they almost certainly see DeVos’s policy change as a golden opportunity to restore the rights of the accused at Harvard.”

their advocacy strategies.

Speakers assailed the Trump administration’s attitudes toward sexual assault. Sejal Singh, a Harvard Law student and representative of Know Your IX, said at the meeting that President Trump “clearly doesn’t care about rape victims.” She detailed the various ways that DeVos’s policies jeopardize the fairness of campus sexual assault investigations for victims, focusing especially on the appeals process and the evidentiary standard. “This guidance [from DeVos] will allow schools to tilt investigations against survivors,” she warned.

Singh also responded to criticisms that are commonly made— including by many professors at Harvard Law School—that the preponderance of evidence standard is unfair to the accused.

“Nothing, I think, could be further from the truth,” she said. She noted that preponderance of evidence is the same standard used

by U.S. courts in civil sexual assault cases, and argued that every student’s equal right to an education makes campus sexual assault cases fundamentally different from criminal cases. She also argued that colleges are better equipped than law enforcement to support victims, and noted that colleges routinely handle cases of non-sexual violence without police involvement.

Sarah Ryan, a College sophomore and member of Our Harvard Can Do Better, lambasted the University’s treatment of sexual assault. “Harvard is essentially refusing to change the policies in relation to a lot of the things that students are calling for and students are demanding,” she said.

Ryan specifically cited the administration’s refusal to adopt an affirmative consent requirement or release more of its data on campus sexual assault cases. She also celebrated a recent Undergraduate Council vote, which expressed the student body’s “disappointment in the Administration’s failure to officially announce its decision regarding Secretary DeVos’s letter.”

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More than anything else, activists want transparency from their school.

While the law professors and administrators who oppose the preponderance of evidence standard have avoided this kind of outwardly visible activism, they almost certainly see DeVos’s policy change as a golden opportunity to restore the rights of the accused at Harvard. Unless the administration has been more transparent with them than with student activists, these legal purists are likely also anxious to know more about Harvard’s plans.

Ironically, activists on opposing sides of Title IX changes are united in frustration with the administration’s silence. Instead of withholding its plans, Harvard could easily choose to answer the questions that activists are so desperate over. Regardless of the decision it makes, Harvard owes its students and faculty as much transparency as possible—especially for an issue as critical as sexual assault. Its silence has caused student activists to question the administration’s commitment to preventing sexual assault, and legal scholars to question its commitment to due process. The university has already proven that it can handle their opposition; it prevailed against student activist demands for a lower standard of evidence until the change in 2014, and it has prevailed against scholarly opposition since then. Harvard ought to cut its own burden of criticism in half and put all of its campus activists at ease by opening up about its Title IX plans.

Members of a divided Harvard community feel either threatened by or optimistic about policy changes in Washington, but they all look fleetingly toward a silent Harvard administration for answers. As graduate student Niharika Singh told fellow student activists, “We need a way to hold our institutions accountable and the systems accountable.”

Internet, Inc.

Technology Superpowers and the Future of African Connectivity Alicia Zhang

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I

n today’s society, going minutes without checking Snapchat, Twitter, or Instagram may feel like torture to some. While Internet addicts cannot survive without platforms like Google and Facebook, these companies are trying to make sure that the Internet cannot survive without them, either.

Although certain websites are so popular in Internetsaturated countries like the United States that they have become verbs—e.g. “to Google”—this phenomenon does not necessarily hold true in other parts of the world. Take the case of sub-Saharan Africa, a region that researchers have called an “archipelago of disconnection” due to its meager 31 percent Internet penetration rate (the percentage of the population that uses the internet). Compared to more developed continents like North America, which boasts a staggering 89 percent Internet penetration rate, Africa is ripe for development in Internet infrastructure.

Technology companies are eager to seize this opportunity.

Facebook and Google are already setting up networks of accessible Internet in underserved communities, and more companies will inevitably follow suit. While it is unclear whether a drive for profit or a genuine philanthropic spirit has motivated these actions, the effects of Internet access will in either case dramatically reshape Africa’s economic, societal, and political development.

AID FOR AGES The augmentation of telecommunications technology is just one item in a diverse portfolio of international aid to Africa. For decades, the international community has devoted tremendous amounts of money into African development through other means, targeted at reducing poverty in a continent where 47 percent of the population lives on $1.90 a day or less. Just this year, the World Bank allocated a record $57 billion to subSaharan African countries for development over the next three fiscal years. The majority of this money, around $45 billion, will go towards anti-poverty programs, emergency assistance, and famine relief.

Instead of ending government dysfunction, poorly-directed aid and debt repayments have trapped African nations in an endless cycle of corruption, poverty, and civil conflict. Whether it is forcing countries to pay back debts, propping up authoritarian leaders by giving them money, or putting local African farmers out of business due to food imports, international aid has categorically failed to help African countries become economically independent. “What most [African nations] want is resources so they can improve domestic capacity for production,” John Mbaku, professor at Weber State University and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution told the HPR. Unfortunately, international aid is targeting short-term benefits, disregarding long-term investments that would boost this domestic capacity.

This is where the private sector comes in. Not only is more

aid funneled through private companies than through charities, but corporations are using their own money to invest into developing nations. These efforts range from blatantly self-interested to believably philanthropic: Starbucks provides a training program for coffee farmers in Rwanda and Ethiopia while companies like Dell, HP, and Verizon donate products and manpower to disaster relief efforts.

Private sector aid has proved more effective than public sector aid in many ways. Developing a nation’s domestic economy is crucial for setting up the country for future success and independence, and corporations help facilitate economic development by creating chains of investment into emerging markets, providing guidance for small businesses, and working with local governments to construct infrastructure. Because the public sector does not have as much expertise in managing and growing businesses, the world is moving quickly towards private sector aid as the preferred means for African development.

WI-FINALLY! If, as Mbaku states, improving domestic capacity is crucial to development, then no form of aid is more valuable than Internet infrastructure investment. At least, this is what companies like Facebook and Google believe. Following the lead of companies like Telecom and Microsoft, Facebook and Google have been racing to build broadband Internet infrastructure in Africa. Facebook, in partnership with companies like Samsung and Qualcomm, launched Internet.org in 2013, which provides affordable Internet access to less developed regions through the app Free Basics. They are also pioneering Express Wi-Fi and Uganda Fiber Build to streamline and construct Internet networks, respectively.

Similarly, Google rolled out an initiative called Project Link, building fiber networks and last-mile Wi-Fi infrastructure to service cities and rural areas. The initiative has since been placed under the umbrella of CSquared, an independent entity representing the joint partnership of multiple corporations.

Google is also pioneering Project Loon, which entails “a ring of balloons, flying around the globe on the stratospheric winds, that provides Internet access to the earth below.” Although it sounds loony, this cutting-edge technology could be the silver bullet for providing internet to isolated areas.

In spite of their ostensible charitability, Facebook and Google’s actual intentions remain nebulous. As Steve Song, founder of the Wi-Fi-building social enterprise Village Telco told the HPR, “It can be a little bit complicated in terms of understanding what’s being done purely as a for-profit investment and what is being done as a philanthropic exercise.” Facebook and Google have proclaimed altruistic intentions. Facebook states that their goal is “to extend the benefits of connectivity to diverse, local communities”, while Google explains that they are “support[ing] the needs of entrepreneurs, innovators, and

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corporate offices.” However, as for-profit corporations, these companies must also be compelled by a profit incentive. Africa’s population is essentially an open market of 1 billion potential Instagrammers or Gmailers, and it makes sense for corporations to try to expand their user base. They might even be collecting data to get ahead on the race for data analytics in Africa.

Whatever their motives, Google and Facebook have been very successful in expanding Internet access. Google’s CSquared covers over 1,600 kilometers of fiber networks across Uganda and Ghana, and Facebook’s Internet.org has brought 40 million people online. In some areas, these initiatives have made big tech synonymous with the Internet itself. A survey conducted by Quartz media revealed that 65 percent of Nigerians say “Facebook is the Internet,” while many of those surveyed asserted that they used Facebook but not the Internet. This indicates an incredibly successful, if somewhat sneaky, business model by Facebook.

TO CONNECT OR TO DISCONNECT? Expanding Internet access in an equal and unrestricted format can provide countless benefits. Mbaku cited improved education, health services, business, and political participation as some beneficial results of widespread Internet usage. If educational materials can be cheaply accessed through the Internet, schools will have far more resources at their disposal.

In addition, networks of communication equip the cohesion needed to provide and distribute medical information. “People die less from malaria the closer they are to telecommunications networks because they can get help,” Song observed.

Perhaps most notably, broadened Internet access can promote democracy and economic growth. The World Economic Forum reports that a 10 percent increase in broadband penetration in low- and middle-income countries is associated with a 1.38 percent increase in economic growth. This is attributed to a boon in online businesses, mobile banking, or improved access to knowledge crucial to running a company. Meanwhile, improved access to information can spur political participation and government accountability. Mbaku stressed the importance of awareness in creating change, arguing that “the more people that are aware of their rights, ... the more likely that the people in that country would want to fight the government to protect those rights.”

Unfortunately, the Internet provided through projects like CSquared or Internet.org may not reap all of these possible benefits. For example, Facebook’s Free Basics app was previously banned in India for “infring[ing] the principles of net neutrality” by letting users access Facebook without charge but not other websites. Facebook did not learn its lesson. The African version of Free Basics maintains Facebook’s power to restrict access to any information or websites it deems unsavory. Because many of the mobile providers partnering with Facebook are partially

or fully state-owned, the government holds regulatory power as well, potentially turning Free Basics into another platform for propaganda. ‘Gbenga Sesan, executive director of the digital rights advocacy and educational enterprise Paradigm Initiative, condemned the practice of limiting website access in an interview with the HPR, saying, “We shouldn’t be giving them half a loaf of bread just because they’re poor.”

Facebook disagrees with these accusations. A statement to the HPR from Facebook’s Uche Ofodile, regional head of Africa for Express Wi-Fi, asserts that technologies like Free Basics, Express Wi-Fi, and fiber build “can bring the cost of connectivity down [and] increase capacity and performance in order to bring more people online.” Indeed, Express Wi-Fi is partnering with hundreds of local entrepreneurs, and the fiber build in Uganda will bring 3 million people online. It is difficult to condemn such improvements in Internet availability regardless of the strings attached.

Google has faced its own share of controversy as well. Not only is its Project Loon very difficult to develop, but the technology is currently facing a derailing lawsuit and political complications in becoming global. Data collection from CSquared benefit Google’s analytics but raise concerns about consumer privacy.

From a broader perspective, Google’s endeavors to improve Internet access do not address the key obstacle of smartphone or laptop availability and may shift focus from more important issues like malaria prevention.

The economics of cheap Internet also are not be as straightforward as anticipated. Rather than boosting entrepreneurship, the availability of the Internet may “stunt innovation and limit the opportunities for African entrepreneurs, making online technology another industry on the continent dominated by big foreign companies.” Facebook and Google could monopolize the telecommunications market in Africa, effectively closing the door to competition and breeding dependency.

The end result of these initiatives by Facebook and Google will depend on their actions and intentions going forward.

If these companies partner too closely with governments or become overeager, they risk endangering freedom of speech or monopolizing a burgeoning African market. But if Facebook and Google commit themselves to net neutrality, affordability, and outreach, they could immensely transform sectors of African society, ranging from education to healthcare to governance.

Bringing hundreds of millions of people into the digital sphere is an enormously complex task. As Song remarked, “Right now, all the technology that we need to connect everyone already exists. What we don’t have is a policy regulatory environment that allows for this diversity of technologies to operate.”

The Internet technologies that Facebook and Google are rolling out in Africa have incredible potential, but the competition of government, corporate, and public interests form a difficult network to navigate. The world is at a technological tipping point.

Our Internet giants should push it in the right direction.

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FREE TIME

I S O L A T E D Will Life Get Better for Rural Alaskans?

Matthew Rossi

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BRIDGING THE GAP

“T

here are a few lonely places in this world, and the wastes of the great Alaskan Interior are the loneliest of them all.”

Isolation is omnipresent in the pages of Guy Salisbury’s The Cruelest Miles. The book describes the 1925 sled dog relay to deliver medicine to the Alaskan city of Nome, where a diphtheria outbreak threatened to turn into an epidemic. With aircraft and ships inoperable in the harsh polar conditions and the nearest antitoxins almost one thousand miles away in Anchorage, the government opted to send the medicine by train as far as possible before teams of sled dogs relayed it for the remaining 674 miles. Miraculously, the medicine was delivered and administered within six days, preventing an epidemic that could have wiped out the entire city.

Ninety-two years later, Anchorage and Nome have grown no more connected; aircraft and ship remain the only safe methods of travel between the two cities. With the third-lowest population among all fifty states but the largest land area by a longshot—larger than Texas, California, and Montana combined—Alaska is uniquely disconnected: its capital city of Juneau is not even linked to the state’s road system. Lacking a typical infrastructure grid and strapped for cash, Alaska faces significant governing challenges in providing for its most vulnerable populations.

CAMPAIGNING FAR AND WIDE Alaska’s vast size complicates the process of running for office. Despite accounting for 17 percent of total U.S. land area, the state accounts for only one percent of the country’s roads, making political candidates largely reliant on Alaska’s network of small planes for traveling to campaign stops. As Amy Lovecraft, chair of the political science department at University of Alaska Fairbanks, told the HPR, “No candidate can afford to go barnstorming in Alaska. It’s just too expensive.”

While access to television and internet have increased in rural Alaska due to innovations such as the Alaska Rural Communications Service, which provides free over the air TV service to rural communities, Alaska is the only state in which radio remains the key communication infrastructure. In a 2015 interview with the Alaska Dispatch News following threats to the Alaska Public Radio Network budget, Cyd Hanns, a resident of Barrow in Alaska’s far north, said, “it would be pretty drastic to lose the APRN.” Another citizen described rural Alaska as “completely dependent” on the network.

While Alaska is considered a red state at the presidential level, it has notably weak partisanship and an affinity for independent candidates. But partisan rancor is often replaced by conflicts rooted in Alaska’s immense geographic divide. Divided into five geographic regions that Alaskans call their ‘states,’ Alaska is often home to competing urban and rural interests.

In the state legislature, according to Lovecraft, this divide results in conflict between the Urban Caucus—often hailing from populous cities like Anchorage, Juneau, and Fairbanks in Alaska’s Southcentral and Southeast regions—and the Bush Caucus—representing the rural regions of Southwest, Interior, and North Slope. “The split between the two caucuses is where you can have a problem in people feeling like they’re not being heard,” said Lovecraft. “These two groups can have very different priorities.”

Infrastructure has shaped the contours of this divide. The Alaskan Bush is made up of the vast land area where the North American road network does not reach. Separated from the rest of the state by their exclusion from the infrastructure system, people in the Bush have historically expressed frustration with the status quo in the Alaskan state government, feeling that their voices hold less sway than the voices of those in the cities.

AN OILY RESIDUE Alaska’s infrastructure has been greatly impacted by the energy industry, particularly oil interests. Perhaps the most audacious undertaking in Alaskan infrastructure development has been the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, a privately-owned crude oil pipeline that stretches over 800 miles between the Prudhoe Oil Field in North Slope and the Southern port of Valdez. In the 1970s, the construction of TAPS coincided with the state’s oil boom, which gave rise to massive revenues for the state government and eliminated the need for tax revenues. To this day, Alaska remains the only state without a sales tax and individual income tax.

But those who think that this tax-free era seems too good to be true are right; the oil and gas infrastructure that symbolized the promise of Alaska’s untapped resources could only perform economic miracles for so long. Now Alaska is going broke—but the electorate, accustomed to paying no state taxes, has failed to adjust to this reality. Instead, anti-tax politicians have continued to dominate Alaska’s state legislature. The result is an endless series of budget cuts that has severely compromised the government’s ability to provide public goods and invest in development.

In the capital, the oil and gas industries have an even more direct impact. Campaign contributions from the energy sector are often directed towards powerful committee chairs in the legislature. Jerry McBeath, a professor emeritus at University of Alaska Fairbanks, described this exertion of influence in an interview with the HPR. Those in the industry, he noted, “focused in on close elections, and made a difference in the outcomes.”

The subtext to these campaign contributions is reciprocity. If the winner doesn’t take sufficiently pro-oil positions during their tenure, it’s a safe bet that oil money will fill their opponent’s coffers come re-election time.

The oil industry, however, has been tainted by the residue of corruption after a statewide scandal that unfolded between 2003 and 2010. A political corruption probe by the name of “Operation Polar Pen” implicated multiple state legislators and led to the convictions of two executives from the VECO Corporation, an oilfield services provider. The web of bribes, kickbacks, and illegal campaign contributions also raised questions about the state’s sitting congressman Don Young and former senator Ted Stevens, whose original conviction for accepting gifts from VECO was overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct.

What made the corruption scandal unique was that its perpetrators boldly displayed their actions. Vic Kohring, one of the legislators implicated in the scandal, “had in his office a huge Alaskan code book that was riddled with bullets, showing his disrespect for the law,” according to McBeath. The members of the state legislature engaging in illegal behavior with VECO would even wear baseball caps embroidered with the initials ‘C.B.C.’ while the body was in session, an abbreviation for their self-adopted moniker, ‘Corrupt Bastard’s Club.’ Clearly, associa-

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tion with the oil industry in Alaska is worn as a badge of honor.

ON THE FRINGES Since the oil and gas industry exercises immense power in Juneau, local development funds, however small, often go to pipelines and fuel storage tanks rather than public service provision. As a consequence, these projects face opposition from much of the rural community, especially Native Alaskans.

Assembling a confederation that represented 21 languages and more than 150 federally-recognized tribes, Native Alaskans first organized against the oil and gas industry under the Alaska Federation of Natives in opposition to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. The AFN’s original goal of land preservation has remained salient over the course of its more than 50-year history.

Beyond protecting Native lands, accusations that pipeline companies discriminate against indigenous peoples have led to further conflict. “Native communities regularly protest about their inability to work for the oil and gas companies,” said McBeath. “There are non-Natives living in these rural areas, but they are there because they’re employees of the oil industry or the State of Alaska.” This form of intrastate outsourcing has led to claims of an anti-Native agenda.

The energy sector has countered charges of employment discrimination by citing the inability of many Native Alaskans to pass the drug tests necessary to work for government contractors. The issue of drug addiction in Native Alaskan communities is indeed potent. Due to their isolation in the Bush, indigenous communities are hit particularly hard by the state’s high healthcare and education costs, especially in light of their reduced access to medical resources compared to the state’s urban centers.

The consequence of this disconnect has been soaring rates of substance abuse, particularly the abuse of alcohol and opioids.

This is only compounded by the fact that many Native Alaskans live in what is termed a ‘food desert,’ where nutritious food is hard to come by. Simply put, there aren’t a lot of supermarkets in the Alaskan Bush. Native health is thus compromised by a limited diet that leads to elevated rates of cancer and osteoporosis. Any description of this health crisis would be incomplete without mentioning the suicide rate among Native Alaskans, which is five times greater than that of the United States as a whole, and is highest among those aged 10 to 19. The isolation of Native Alaskans results in a shocking statistic: they are dying at 150 percent the rate of non-Natives.

UNBRIDGEABLE? The devastating picture of indigenous health in Alaska leads to a crucial question: how is the state government working to ensure that its health, education, and welfare infrastructure is working for everyone in an equitable and efficient manner? The answer remains unclear. While organizations such as the Federal Health Program for American Indians and Alaska Natives have

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tried to implement public policy approaches and emergency-response solutions in the state, they have frequently been undercut by budget slashes and a state government enamored with antitax rhetoric. Meanwhile, there is no indication that cities like Nome and Anchorage will ever be capable of overcoming their physical disconnect.

The failure of government leadership has led outside groups to step in and innovate. Some have hailed private-public partnerships as the ideal solution, arguing that they ensure public benefit while infusing projects with funding from the private sector, thus circumventing the cash-strapped government. Other groups have emerged at the grassroots level. Nuvista Light and Electric Cooperative, Inc., for example, is a nonprofit that was founded in 1995 to tackle the issue of energy provision for rural Alaska. Nuvista operates as a planner for the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in Western Alaska to improve transportation, education, and healthcare in addition to energy infrastructure. In an interview with the HPR, Nuvista Executive Director Natalie Hanson sounded an optimistic note on the direction of the state’s model of rural energy provision: “The state is actively discussing energy projects for rural Alaska, and wind turbines and solar projects are happening as we speak.”

Still, groups like Nuvista face challenges. In 2012, Nuvista’s marquee proposal to construct a dam in Alaska’s largest state park at Chikuminuk Lake was nixed in the legislature after environmental and economic concerns prompted opposition.

The geography of rural Alaska also remains an immense obstacle to the viability of large-scale development. “Seasonally speaking, a lot of the time the last barge comes in the fall and then after that there’s no option to get items until springtime,” said Hanson, who also noted the tremendous economic pressure this places on rural communities themselves. “Transportation from these communities to the hubs with the main hospitals comes at enormous cost. It can cost $1,000, and that’s just for airfare. A lot of people are living a subsistence lifestyle in these areas and not getting a paycheck for most of the year, so that cost is incredibly challenging and frustrating.”

There are easily identifiable problems affecting isolated communities in Alaska, and there are no easy answers. But with the state’s limited infrastructure development too frequently servicing vested oil interests, the status quo must be called into question. Pipelines do not bring nutritious food or medical care to Native Alaskan communities. They cannot be used as a means to communicate or hold government accountable. And pipelines cannot bridge the divide between Alaska’s urban and rural populations.

Nuvista’s bottom-up, grassroots approach may represent the way forward for rural Alaska. Still, it will take a concerted statewide investment of monetary and human capital to bring rural communities out of isolation. In order to ensure equitable and affordable access to the resources the Alaskan Bush desperately needs, policymakers must change the way that they look at infrastructure; it must not be evaluated by the typical metrics of cost and revenue, but by its impact on the welfare of those it serves.

FREE TIME

CONCRETE BEAUTY Lauren Anderson

T

he word infrastructure is rarely associated with beauty.

‘Infrastructure’ connotes a bureaucratic and unpleasant world, one that is riddled with the anxieties of contemporary urban life. The concrete structures that house our day to day lives become lost amidst blazing sirens and ceaseless streams of activity. The beauty in the world we’ve created is forgotten.

While infrastructure must serve a practical purpose, a locale’s appearance—whether shaped by concrete mazes or by glass skyscrapers—has a lasting impact on the area surrounding it and on the people who live there. As is seen in Los Angeles, Detroit, and Japan, the future of infrastructure demands an approach that integrates functionality with aesthetic beauty. Today’s developers and architects face a dilemma: should they sacrifice aesthetic beauty for functionality or create new designs that preserve past culture while meeting modern needs? For the sake of our communities and their welfare, modern infrastructure must use architectural artistry to preserve a city’s cultural past before it surrenders to modernist aesthetics, political agendas, or scaleddown budgets.

COMBINING THE OLD WITH THE NEW Aging cities face the unique challenge of preserving infrastructure from past decades while developing modern structures that meet contemporary demands. Los Angeles is no exception. At the heart of downtown L.A. lies Olvera Street, one of

the original alleyways created by Mexican settlers. Today, it is a thriving hub that celebrates Mexican culture, testifying to the influence of Mexican-Americans in the city. In short, Olvera Street is culture. “We need to value history,” David Salomon, professor of art history at Ithaca College, told the HPR. “Even if it costs more money, we need to retrofit. If it’s old buildings, one needs to be creative and flexible about what happens in them.”

In line with Salomon’s advice, Los Angeles has spearheaded projects to blend the new and the old. For example, Olvera Street is part of the El Pueblo de Los Angeles historical monument, a city-run organization aimed at preserving Mexican culture.

Union Station, a hallmark of Art Deco design that lies adjacent to Olvera Street, has similarly been revitalized and repurposed by the city. In fact, Metropolitan Transit Authority officials are planning to preserve the historic space’s original appearance, while renovating its interior to include a retail center, new restaurants, and a complete remodel of the passenger concourse area.

While Olvera Street and Union Station retain Los Angeles’s Hispanic roots, new commercial developments are springing up around this hub of cultural life. From the Wilshire-Grand Center, a glass-paned, 73-story skyscraper, to the new federal courthouse, contemporary infrastructure projects are leaving their mark on Los Angeles. The translucent grey window panes of these new structures tower above the older infrastructure they surround, housing the beauty of the past in between the allure of the future.

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Communities and developers have a responsibility to ensure that new infrastructure is functional while preserving the culture and history of an area. “These are monumental things that are in our everyday lives,” Salomon said. “Why would you consider an ugly, monstrous thing? It seems irresponsible to human beings.” Placing an emphasis on the aesthetics of modern infrastructure and blending it with pre-existing designs is becoming a necessity for older cities. Los Angeles shows that preserving historic infrastructure and combining it with contemporary design can produce a city that blends aesthetics with functionality, while meeting modern society’s needs.

REVITALIZING THE ALL-AMERICAN CITY A bus lined with vibrant graffiti art comes to a stop in a neighborhood filled with empty buildings and vacant lots. Tourists exit the bus while school-aged children file in. This bus is part of the Detroit Bus Company, one of many projects trying to reinvigorate Detroit’s economy through social and infrastructural development. With its fleet of brightly colored, repurposed school buses, the Detroit Bus Company generates revenue from tourists, which it then uses to bus students to school free of charge. The Bus Company shows how locally based infrastructure development has the capability to bring Detroit out of economic downturn.

At the height of the Great Recession, The Motor City suffered from an entire industry’s collapse and unprecedented, city-wide population decline. The 90,000 empty lots and 31,000 empty buildings spread across Detroit have become symbols of the city’s decay. Despite the consequences of nearly 10 years of economic stagnation, investment in infrastructure could mark an upturn for Detroit. In 2014, the City of Detroit announced a plan to invest $1.7 billion in neglected infrastructure projects. With this funding, the city hopes to revitalize past developments, while also encouraging projects from young entrepreneurs such as Andy Didorosi, who founded the Detroit Bus Company.

For example, the noted architectural firm Hamilton Anderson Associates recently completed renovations on the Strathmore apartment complex, housed in what was once a luxury hotel in Midtown Detroit. The firm was able to save the building from demolition, convert it into both luxury and affordable housing, and restore the structure to its former beauty. Reinvestment in the Strathmore, now a signature of Midtown Detroit, is proof that aesthetically pleasing and innovative design can reshape a rising community.

Architects and developers, both burgeoning and established, have the ability to reinvigorate Detroit and its hardest hit neighborhoods by preserving existing infrastructure while incorporating newer developments. Infrastructure is essential to creating a sense of community and developing the culture of an area. It permeates the cultural landscape of a neighborhood and must function as both as a piece of aesthetic beauty, and as a tool to invigorate an area’s economy. “It is sobering thinking that this will be around for a century or more and makes you think about where you put it and how you make it,” Brian Hayes, author of Infrastructure: The Book of Everything for the Industrial Landscape, told the HPR. “You constantly need to focus on solving the next thing, not what you don’t like now.” Both the Detroit Bus

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Line and the Strathmore apartment complex demonstrate the ability of locally-based infrastructure entrepreneurs to transform a city through the aesthetics of their projects. By revitalizing the city through infrastructure, Detroit can begin to drive itself out of its recent downturn and once again become the all-American city.

DESIGNING FOR THE FUTURE Bullet trains have become synonymous with Japanese infrastructure. The Shinkansen–the network of bullet trains that has become a symbol of national development pride–runs alongside the greenery of rural Japan. The stark gray trains create a blunt contrast with their natural surroundings. This may soon change.

A new bullet train design by architect Kazuyo Sejima would allow bullet trains to blend into their surroundings, rendering them nearly invisible. Constructed with a semi-reflective outer shell, the train would reflect the landscapes it runs through, integrating the necessity of mass transit with the tranquility of nature. The train, set to open in 2018, blends both natural and urban elements to create a more pleasurable mass transit experience. “The appearance of something, the cleanliness of it, all play a role into a perception of value,” Monica Tibbits-Nutt, director of the MBTA Fiscal Management Control Board, told the HPR. “I think [aesthetics] is huge for perception and the way people treat trains and stations.”

Trains are not the only aspect of Japanese infrastructure to move toward integrated design. The Sendai Mediatheque, a library and media center designed by Pritzker prize winning architect Toyo Ito, is a quintessential example of aesthetic innovation. Its design takes elements of the natural world and blends them into a building whose sole purpose is to house technology.

The seven-story building is intended to be a fluid space where media technology, including a movie theater and wide-ranging film and audio recording collection, form a part of the urban environment. The columns that line the cube-shaped building appear tree-like, mirroring the rows of tree-lined streets that surround the building. Similarly, the tubular interior shafts of the building symbolize the seaweed that grows around Japan.

The openness and translucence of the glass allows the Sendai Mediatheque to change as the seasons do, effectively blurring boundaries between the natural and man-made world.

As the world turns to Japan for the future of infrastructure design, Japanese aesthetics have arguably played an influential role in the architectural community for nearly a century. The controversial modernist architecture of the mid-20th century was created by architects who had already looked toward Japan.

In Japanese aesthetics, American architect Frank Lloyd Wright found an “organic” approach to design, one that integrates a simple composition into the beauty of natural surroundings.

Although 21st-century architects continue to look to Japan for the future of design, Japanese aesthetics have already played a fundamental role in building the concrete world. By fusing this concrete with nature, investing in local entrepreneurs and designers, and erecting skyscrapers around ethnic and cultural enclaves, the modern city can unite aesthetic form with architectural functionality, making our concrete jungle both a place to live and to enjoy living.

UNITY IN DIVERSITY

The Nascent Political Identity of Indian-Americans

WINTER 2017 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 17

UNITED STATES

Meena Venkataramanan

K

arthik Chandramouli has always been an active citizen.

Growing up in Kentucky as the only son of two Indian immigrant professionals, Chandramouli recalls his thirdgrade classmates in 1979 being unable to tell him apart from the Iranian refugee in their class. The experience sparked his interest in the politics of racial justice and civil liberties. He majored in political science and earned a master’s in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School. Running on a platform of social justice, this past spring he campaigned for village council trustee in Mundelein, Illinois.

In 2017, the marginalization of Indian-Americans continues to inspire their political activism. In response to the hate crimes committed in February with the shootings of Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani in Kansas (which resulted in Kuchibhotla’s death) and Deep Rai in Seattle just two weeks later, Indian-American communities hosted vigils and petitioned representatives to introduce more comprehensive hate crime legislation.

But in the broader history of Indian-Americans’ civic engagement, such strong political involvement is rare. Only recently have Indian-Americans begun to embrace their roles as civic leaders, with leaders across the country tossing their hats into the political ring. A more politically-active cohort of IndianAmericans could wield significant force at all levels of government: Indian-Americans compose about one percent of the total U.S. population, and are one of the fastest-growing ethnic minorities in America.

Nevertheless, many obstacles stand in the way of IndianAmericans’ efforts to build a collective political identity. The combined forces of internal, religious, and linguistic divisions, along with a lack of organizational institutions, form the core of this civic disengagement. But while additional political organizations offer an important step towards collective action, for Indian-Americans to unite as a robust political force, the movement must begin with involvement at the local level.

INTERNAL DIVISIONS Internal divisions along religious and linguistic lines form the most tangible obstacles to the formation of a collective Indian-American political identity. “Most [Indian-American] communities tend to congregate by language rather than race,” Temple University professor Sanjoy Chakravorty told the HPR. The Indian government recognizes 22 distinct Indian languages—only a fraction of the larger number spoken throughout India. This extreme linguistic diversity limits Indian-Americans’ ability to communicate with one another in a single tongue.

According to Drew University professor Sangay Mishra, tensions among Indian Hindus and Muslims further prevent the

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formation of a collective political identity among the IndianAmerican community. “Even though we’re majority Hindu, we have a large segment of Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians,” Mishra explained in an interview with the HPR. He noted that the interaction among these different religious groups plays a large part in organizing widespread political movements among IndianAmericans.

However, instead of bridging religious barriers to build political cohesion in the post-9/11 era, Hindu-Americans have tried to distance themselves from Muslims, Mishra said, adding that Sikhs are prone to doing the same. “There is a very powerful mobilization among the Sikh community where they feel as if they’re being mistaken as Muslims, so they need to educate law enforcement agencies and the American community about what Sikhism is,” he explained. According to Mishra, this interaction will shape the evolution of Indian-American political identity and determine “whether it is all-inclusive or just a Hindu identity that distances itself from other religions.”

COMPLEX CLASS INTERESTS In addition to these internal divisions, Indian-Americans often find themselves split between their class interests. While many Indian-Americans’ cultural and economic interests favor the Republican Party, their marginalization as racial and religious minorities draws them towards the Democrats.

While a slight majority of Indian-Americans lean left, according to Chakravorty, Indian-Americans are natural Republican voters due to their cultural conservatism. Moreover, as Chakravorty asserted, Indian-Americans’ economic interests also favor the GOP. Hrishikesh Joshi, a postgraduate research fellow at Princeton University, argued in a National Review article that Democratic policies like the current country-based, permanentresidence visa quota system and race-based affirmative action policies disproportionately harm Indian-Americans.

But Joshi noted that the Republican Party has failed to market to Indian-Americans at large. “The perception of the Democratic Party as the party for minorities has been marketed and presented robustly through outreach programs and the media,” Joshi told the HPR. He explained that the lack of GOP outreach “overrides the other socially conservative views that Indian-American immigrants tend to have which would point them towards the Republican Party.”

Indeed, the continued religious and social marginalization faced by Indian-Americans leads many away from the Republican Party. For instance, Chakravorty noted that the party has become synonymous with Christianity, which has made Indian-American voters “feel unwelcome.” In fact, Chakravorty argued that “in order to become prominent Republicans, Indians have to become Christians,” referring to former Indian-

UNITED STATES

American governors Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley as examples of the deeply-rooted Republican evangelism that effectively necessitates Christianity as a condition for political success among candidates of racial minorities.

Mishra echoed these sentiments, noting that even though Indian-Americans would seem to naturally lean right because of the community’s general affluence and conservative cultural values, “their religious, cultural, and social marginalization makes them more receptive to liberal ideas that the Democratic Party has put forward,” especially in the wake of recent hate crimes. “In the end, they are seen as non-white, they are seen as minorities, they are seen as people who are perpetual outsiders,” argued Mishra.

BOTTOM-UP ACTIVISM While Mishra acknowledged the weight of internal divisions and class interests, he said the main obstacle preventing Indian-Americans’ political organization is a lack of organizing institutions at both the national and grassroots levels. “[IndianAmericans] have not been approached by political parties and candidates. … They’re not trying to recruit,” said Mishra.

South Asian Americans Leading Together is one umbrella organization that is tailored towards Indian-Americans. By representing South Asian Americans of multiple ethnicities, cultures, and religions, SAALT attempts to overcome internal divisions and focus on collective advocacy related to issues affecting the community—including immigration, civil rights, and hate violence. “Today, we’re seeing the highest level of hate crimes [against South Asian Americans] since the year after 9/11.

It’s an epidemic, it’s terrifying,” SAALT’s Director of National Policy and Advocacy Lakshmi Sridaran told the HPR. “There is an onslaught of policy attacks against members of our community, whether that’s the Muslim ban or limiting H1B visas.”

However, complacency among Indian-Americans in the face of injustice is pervasive, explained Mishra: as “Indian-Americans are not considered a ‘problem minority,’ which leads them to not worry about discrimination because they believe they are doing so well, contributing to the economy, and being educated.”

But according to Mishra, in the end, no matter how marginalized Indian-Americans may feel, due to their relatively high status as a minority group, they are not immune to it. He noted that many Indian-Americans believed “that if we kept our heads down and kept doing what we’re doing, we would be able to fit in. But now we realize that’s not true.”

STARTING SMALL While national advocacy groups like SAALT offer robust paths towards collectivizing personal marginalization and at-

tacking problems like Islamophobia, in order for Indian-Americans to form a truly collective political force, they must become more politically engaged at the local level. That means welcoming political discourse in their social circles, voting for candidates who will champion their interests, and running for office.

To address the first goal, organizations like SAALT have developed regional and local initiatives to engage South Asian Americans in political discourse, including town halls, naturalization clinics, and roundtable discussions with local policymakers. But while these efforts are primarily concentrated in Washington, D.C. and New Jersey, Indian-American communities across the country have enhanced political discourse among their members in the wake of tragedy.

The second goal of increased political representation presents a greater challenge to increased civic engagement, because many Indian immigrants have yet to receive full citizenship.

However, cities like San Francisco have recently passed measures to allow noncitizens to vote in local school board elections, illustrating the value of starting small when it comes to civic engagement. As a result of San Francisco’s efforts to expand suffrage, many previously disenfranchised Asian-Americans and Latinos—who make up a majority of public school students in the area—have been empowered to become more politically engaged.

Furthermore, breaking down the English language barrier for more recent Indian-American immigrants offers one way to promote civic engagement. Groups like SAALT have translated voter educational materials into several South Asian languages to increase civic literacy, while ballots in Bengali have already been implemented in some areas of New York City.

As for Indian-Americans with full citizenship, running for office is becoming an increasingly popular option. During the most recent election cycle, a record number of Indian-Americans were elected to Congress, evincing the unprecedented political success of the community. Moreover, a slate of recent appointments of Indian-Americans to the executive cabinet indicates greater bipartisan representation on the federal level.

Meanwhile, some Indian-Americans have been focusing on attaining smaller positions, including state legislature seats, board of education positions, and city council memberships.

“Indian-Americans are more active in supporting candidates than in running for office, and are generally less active in the politics of local communities,” Chandramouli noted, emphasizing that efforts at change must start small. To Chandramouli, collective political mobilization of the Indian-American community ultimately depends on the efforts of local leaders.

“We don’t organize and get things done locally,” Chandramouli told the HPR. “When we learn how to do that, we can leave an impact.”

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UNITED STATES

Not Exactly Rocket Science Hank Sparks

I

n the years before America’s triumphant 1969 moon landing, there was panic. In 1957, the Soviet Union had successfully launched Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite. Sputnik, a “dazzling new sight in the heavens,” was an extraordinary human accomplishment. The beautifully polished metal sphere managed to orbit Earth 1,440 times before it burned up in Earth’s atmosphere 92 days later. Most importantly, however, Sputnik represented the apex of Soviet scientific accomplishment. The Communists had beat America to the heavens.

Naturally, American leaders panicked. The launch galvanized America toward massive new investments in aerospace. The federal government founded The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which soon ballooned to require over 4 percent of the federal government’s budget. Soon, American astronauts would become the first and only to set foot on the moon. The Soviet scare ended in American triumph.

It’s now been six years since the retirement of the space shuttle. NASA can no longer ferry humans into space. Its portion of the federal budget has declined from almost 4.5 percent during the Apollo program to a measly 0.5 percent. John Logsdon, former director of the Space Policy Institute and Emeritus Professor at George Washington University, summarized his experience to the HPR: “I was at the Apollo 11 launch. I lived the period where we were exploring. ... The fact that we stopped and haven’t restarted is disappointing.”

The disappointment of previous generations at the state of space exploration is palpable. In 2012, Buzz Aldrin took to the cover of the MIT Technology Review to lament, “You promised me Mars colonies. Instead, I got Facebook.” Their cries of disappointment have coincided with a real paradigm shift in space travel. Gone is the galvanizing context of the Cold War and massive government funding for ventures into space. Instead, America has entered a new age of private-public partnership and international cooperation in space.

PRIVATE PROMISE Where the Russian government spent years launching a satellite that stayed in space for a mere 92 days, today, satellites made by companies can track down human trafficking vessels from orbit by identifying boat characteristics as small as mast design. Similarly, while researchers used to depend solely on governments for funding, today initiatives like Google’s Lunar XPrize promise millions of dollars to private teams able to land a vehicle on the moon. And although governments used to be the gatekeepers to the heavens, today organizations like Space for

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Humanity are seeking to democratize such access by choosing astronauts of diverse backgrounds, nationalities, and ethnicities.

It’s not a totally new development to have private companies working on projects in space, according to Harvard Professor Matthew Hersch. Hersch told the HPR that private individuals have spent vast sums of money on space exploration efforts like telescope development since as early as the 18th century. NASA itself has partnered with private companies since its inception for almost all of its hardware production. What is new is the media attention and resources these private companies command.

No longer is NASA the image of America’s cosmic hopes: that moniker now belongs to lean, billionaire-backed startups like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin.

SpaceX made history in 2012 when its Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial vessel to dock with the International Space Station. Today, it is forging a very public partnership with NASA. The company is currently modifying the same Dragon spacecraft that delivered cargo to the ISS in 2012 to deliver humans there as well as early as 2018. Since the retirement of Space Shuttle Atlantis in 2011, NASA has had no aircraft capable of manned missions to space and has instead relied on Russian aircraft. Dragon, if successful, would be America’s only space shuttle—but it would be private.

The private space industry today seems keen on the idea of teaming up with government. “One thing we preach a lot is public-private partnership,” Jane Kinney, assistant director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, told the HPR. “NASA is the expert on a lot of things and has a lot of great data, but there are just so many new ideas coming out of the private sector leading to innovation.” Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is also looking to eschew the traditional role of a contractor and instead partner as an equal with the government and shape the regulatory environment in space. At the National Space Council meeting in October, Blue Origin called for streamlining the licensing process for launches so it can pursue its “Blue Moon” program to make commercial landings on the moon faster.

But private corporations aren’t just filling gaps left by the government. They are also exploring new possibilities in space.

MarsOne is currently in the process of selecting candidates for manned missions to Mars as early as 2024. MoonExpress is planning on launching the first commercial resource prospecting vehicle to the moon by 2020. Virgin Galactic is looking to become the first commercial spaceline bringing civilians into space. When asked by the HPR if space travel would ever become a normal human activity, Jane Kinney said “we’re almost already there.”

In the last few years, these companies have come to command entrepreneurial admiration. In a 2016 survey of startup founders conducted by venture capital firm First Round, SpaceX and Tesla leader Elon Musk was named the mostadmired figure in tech. SpaceX and Blue Origin, much like tech firms such as Apple and Google, often host their own press events for product launches.

FOOTPRINTS AND FLAGS When Kennedy set America’s sights on the moon in 1962, he portrayed the quest as a profoundly patriotic endeavor. The fact that private companies are increasingly the public face of space exploration means it will difficult for another “Kennedy moment” to mobilize so much human effort and capital toward a singular goal. There is no Cold War-like phenomenon that forces the government to signal its technological superiority with a moonshot like the Apollo program. Instead, companies might proceed at their own pace and according to their own profit incentives.

Successive presidents in the White House, however, have been in search of their very own Kennedy moment. There is need, according to Hersch, to show the world that “America’s best days are not behind it.” Government-led space exploration today is seen more as a signal of American prestige and prowess than a purely scientific endeavor.

To that end, the Trump administration has promised a renewed focus on space exploration and has recreated The National Space Council that existed during the George H.W. Bush administration to foster intergovernmental cooperation on the matter.

The Trump administration has also announced that the focus of American efforts in space will once again be the moon. The new administration believes that returning to the moon will not simply serve to “leave behind footprints and flags” but also to “build the foundation ... to send Americans to Mars and beyond.”

But the context in which this administration is promising renewed American effort in space is bleak. NASA’s funding as a percentage of the federal budget has been steadily declining for decades, and the Trump administration has promised no respite from funding cuts for the beleaguered agency. “NASA has been trying to seek ambitious goals with inadequate resources,” Logsdon said. “Every outside look at NASA’s efforts in the last thirty years … has concluded that the resources NASA’s budget has do not match its goals.”

Both the Obama and Trump administrations have taken into account the increasing prominence of private companies in space. When Pence announced the new efforts to reach the moon, he acknowledged that “we must look beyond the halls of government for input and guidance.” Obama too promised to work with an “array of private companies.” Neither administration, however, has invested the resources necessary for truly ground-breaking government-led space exploration. And although most Americans view NASA favorably, only 23 percent would support increasing NASA’s budget.

HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM Even without public support for a larger budget, it’s possible

that a looming challenge like climate change or competition from another world power would force America to invest more in space just as during the Cold War. Despite the fact that China’s Tiangong-1 Space Station is currently hurdling towards earth after the Chinese lost control of the spacecraft, the country remains ambitious about its cosmic prospects. The National Space Administration plans on landing a rival probe on Mars by 2020, as well as landing a probe on the infamous and largely unexplored dark side of the moon.

This technological prowess could pose a threat America must address, as China and Russia develop offensive space capabilities with the ability to disrupt American communications.

Furthermore, the urgent and largely unaddressed problem of climate change could force NASA to work towards colonizing Mars. Rising temperatures and seas may create millions of refugees fleeing drastic climate changes over the next century. The natural response is to find a planet not imperiled by impending climate disaster. Stephen Hawking recently announced that for humanity to survive we must colonize other planets within the century. To foster Mars colonization, it’s hard to think of a more galvanizing context than the very survival of our species.

Nevertheless, most agree that both international competition and climate change are unlikely to force the government to invest in NASA in the same way it did during the Cold War. Logsdon argues, “space exploration is not much related to climate change” unless one adopts the “pessimistic view” that the Earth is doomed that we have to leave. As for competition with world powers like China creating a new space race, Logsdon argues it’s more likely America will show “leadership through leading a coalition.” In other words, international cooperation, as opposed to competition, is the new norm.

Signs of this new era of international cooperation are already emerging. The International Space Station, a $150 billion project, has been continuously inhabited for over 16 years now. The cosmic outpost has hosted long-term crews from ten different nations and visitors from many more. And just as private companies command a great deal of buzz in space policy circles, the idea of international cooperation in space is also more popular than ever. This year, for the first time in twenty years, Russia sent a significant delegation to the Space Foundation’s annual Space Symposium to discuss future partnerships in space with the United States. Slow steps, made by international governments and private business in tandem, are the future of space exploration.

TO INFINITY AND BEYOND? It’s unlikely that another major achievement in space will come in the near future from NASA alone. What is clear is that space exploration has fundamentally changed. It will be slow, difficult, and dominated by the visions of corporate heads and other international powers.

Hersch, nevertheless, is optimistic. “When European explorers arrived in the Americas,” he said, “they encountered gravity, air, water, food, animals, plants, and sometimes people willing to help them. We are going to encounter none of those things when we go to Mars.” It takes time to overcome these fundamental physical barriers to Mars colonization, Hersch argued. “It’s going to happen, but it may not happen quite as quickly as everyone hopes it will.”

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HOPE after HEARTBREAK

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Wyatt Hurt

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rma, Harvey, Matthew, Sandy, Irene—the increased number of natural disasters in recent years has made storm names eerily familiar. Things will only get worse in the future. A model from the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory indicates that warming by the end of the 21st century will likely increase tropical cyclone intensity by 2 to 11 percent.

In the aftermath of these disasters, some governments do more than just rebuild. Instead of merely recreating old infrastructure, a few cities take proactive steps to improve the lives of their residents and the resilience of their communities.

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DEVASTATION IN TUSCALOOSA

RESILIENCE IN HOUSTON

A strong tornado tore through the community of Tuscaloosa, Alabama at 5:13 p.m. on April 27, 2011. Over the next six minutes, an eighth of the city was destroyed, 1,200 people were injured, and 53 lost their lives. After seeing the destruction, President Obama said he had “never seen devastation like this.” The tornado disproportionately affected the poor: 70 percent of damaged properties belonged to low-income renters and homeowners.

Mayor Walter Maddox and his administration were left with the difficult task of rebuilding their city.

Speaking to the media, Maddox declared that “the best way for us to honor those we lost is to rebuild the city in a way that honors their sacrifices.” The city government worked to build an inclusive coalition, holding meetings across the city and launching a virtual town hall website. Thousands of people provided their input. Surprisingly, those living in Tuscaloosa overwhelmingly weren’t interested in taking the fast lane to recovery. In their town hall comments, people expressed their desire to take the time to rebuild strategically.

Within days of the storm, as search and rescue efforts were still wrapping up, Maddox and City Council laid out a bold agenda, establishing a task force to plan construction in affected areas. Just four months later, Tuscaloosa Forward, a strategic plan to renew and rebuild the city, was born. The coalition identified four principles to guide redevelopment: effective land use, sustainable redevelopment, affordable and high-quality housing, and improving infrastructure to address long-standing issues and future needs. The local newspaper had high praise for the project, summing up the hopes of an entire city: “This may be the most open, collaborative, and important process the City of Tuscaloosa has ever engaged.”

Maddox and the City Council reassigned seven staff members and created a recovery agency, which later transitioned into the Office of Resilience and Innovation. “We gave staff the ability to go into a lot of departments, cut through city bureaucracy, and focus on recovery,” Maddox told the HPR. “Our recovery was rapid because we were able to cut the red tape and move the things we needed to move.”

Maddox’s approach has been widely praised. In 2012, he was named municipal leader of the year by American City and County for his “strong, decisive and comforting leadership.” He now serves as a Program on Crisis Leadership Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, helping train other elected officials and civil servants on how to respond to disasters. “Recovery is the hardest aspect of the event,” Maddox told the HPR. “When all the cameras are gone and the news cycle ends, your community is still struggling to rebuild and handle day-to-day operations of the government at the same time.”

Today, nearly all affected businesses have reopened or are currently under construction, and the city has invested over $364 million in improvements to private properties. $130 million has been provided for public infrastructure projects and economic development, rezoning land to provide high quality housing and commercial space. Moving forward, the mayor has also stressed the importance of adaptive management. “When we implemented the Tuscaloosa Forward plan, we didn’t stop improving,” said Maddox. “We have gone back on a quarterly basis and made changes where we felt like we needed to make changes.”

As Hurricane Harvey ravaged Houston, Stephen Costello, former Houston City Councilor and current Chief Resilience Officer of Houston, was closely monitoring flooding. “This was something we’d never anticipated before, both in terms of area of coverage and in concentration,” Costello told the HPR. Trained as an engineer with expertise in flooding and drainage, he’s affectionately called the ‘Flood Czar’ by the city’s mayor.

His office’s job is not to coordinate immediate disaster response, but instead to look at the long-term, evaluating projects that will improve the resilience of the city in future disasters. With only one staff member, Costello’s agency is stretched thin.

Houston, a large city built on the Gulf of Mexico, is predisposed to natural disasters. In 2015, the Washington Post rated the city as one of the most flood-prone cities in the United States.

Since 1964, Harris County has declared 27 disasters—eight hurricanes, eight floods, six severe storms, three fires and one tornado. Because of the city’s sprawl and its proximity to water, commercial and residential properties are widely built on floodplains. Yet this practice is difficult to prevent: development of floodplain maps began in the ’70s and frequently change based on improved modeling.

With these factors in mind, Costello was working even before Harvey to mitigate potential damage in areas where the city saw repetitive flooding. He established the Stormwater Action Team to figure out how to improve infrastructure as soon as possible.

SWAT launched a task force, in the works for the past year, focusing on challenges the city is facing in redevelopment. “We’ve been trying to build trust with the community and illustrate that we’re spending money on improvements wisely,” he said.

Harvey created new challenges for the city, but Costello’s agency is maintaining its focus: “Our focus always has been and will continue to be flooding and drainage.

Despite being under-resourced, Costello is optimistic about the future: “I’m excited about the fact that as we recover we’ll be focusing on a more resilient phrase and long-term sustainability.

I don’t want to prepare a comprehensive report and have it sit on the shelf. I’m an engineer–I want to build stuff and get it done.”

Every natural disaster is different, but the blueprints laid by one city can undoubtedly provide the foundations for plans laid by others. Much like Tuscaloosa, Houston is focusing on engaging individuals and businesses in the creation of a long-term resiliency plan. However, despite the fact that it is a far smaller city, Tuscaloosa has dedicated significantly more resources to long-term resiliency. With both the intensity and frequency of storms increasing in Houston, that may change in the coming years.

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PRINCIPLES OF SUSTAINABILITY While Tuscaloosa and Houston are both actively working to improve their resiliency, they have decidedly different approaches to sustainable development. In Houston, Costello said that “to develop sustainably we figure out a way to use as many resources as possible to minimize the effects of flooding.” Tuscaloosa’s increased allocation of resources to development projects means that they have the luxury of thinking long term. “[Sustainability] means that what we rebuild lasts more than a generation,” said Maddox.

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Municipal leaders aren’t alone in their struggle to define sustainable development. The international community has struggled for years with the complicated dynamics of balancing environmental preservation, economic development, and the well-being of people. The most widely used definition of sustainable development comes from the United Nations: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

100 Resilient Cities, a project of the Rockefeller Foundation, is a global coalition of municipalities and experts working together to build stronger cities. Their “City Resilience Framework” describes the essential systems of a strong city in terms of four dimensions: health and wellbeing, economy and society, infrastructure and environment, and leadership and strategy.

The foundation emphasizes the importance of communities being reflective, using past experiences to inform future decisions; inclusive, forming a broad coalition when crafting policy; and redundant, accommodating potential system failures through extra capacity. The project is still young, launching in 2013, but hopes to encourage more cities to adopt similar resilience measures to Tuscaloosa.

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S ROLE Federal agencies, which pay some municipal redevelopment costs with hefty restrictions, tend to frustrate local leaders. Both Maddox and Costello criticized the federal government’s narrow focus when providing funds for redevelopment. In Tuscaloosa’s case, FEMA calculated that the municipality had $1 billion in unmet need after the storm. The city received only $130 million from the agency, much of which came from insurance money.

To this date, FEMA owes the city over $2 million in outstanding payments. Similar problems are currently occurring in Houston.

Costello told the HPR that citizens trying to elevate their homes through a FEMA program have been overwhelmingly rejected in recent years. Last year, over 600 Houston residents applied for the program. FEMA accepted only 39 requests.

“I constantly think about places like Houston and Florida and Puerto Rico, who have been hit by disaster. My heart goes out to those leaders, because they think they’re going to get quick use of federal funds, but it will take years and years for them to recover their communities,” said Maddox. “Part of me wishes we’d never taken the money [from FEMA] and just borrowed it ourselves. We still have recovery projects going because of the inefficiency.”

Houston is struggling with similar restrictions. Costello explained that the city is interested in a buyout program, which would involve raising and redeveloping flood plains around the city, but that, among other problems, the federal government mandates that only green space can be developed on the floodplain. FEMA contends that this is the best policy for preventing storm damage to homes and businesses, but this places significant financial strain on municipalities. When areas are left undeveloped, cities lose a significant portion of their tax base.

Houston is currently evaluating options to use local dollars for a potential buyout plan, which would allow them to raise floodplains and rebuild homes and commercial buildings on them.

FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Assistance program covers 75 percent of the cost of municipal projects that will permanently eliminate or reduce an area’s long-term vulnerability to disasters.

This funding is accompanied by many restrictions, including that all mitigation projects must comply with the National Environmental Policy Act and other applicable laws. These restrictions can place a significant burden on local governments.

In Tuscaloosa, an intersection at Berry and Hargrove roads was completely destroyed. Thirty years ago, wells under two gas stations on the site were remediated improperly. Despite the local government’s determination that there was no threat to water nor the sewer, they were still unable to use federal funds to rebuild the site after it was declared an environmental risk by the federal government. Maddox expressed frustrations with the inequalities caused by these regulations: “In our case, the areas which were destroyed were low-income areas with environmental issues. Once you begin environmental testing, which takes forever to get to, you discover environmental issues, which makes it difficult to use federal dollars.”

Costello, frustrated in his efforts to protect Houston from future flooding, has met with FEMA officials, offering to use Houston as a pilot for modifying restrictions on their funding.

Particularly important to him is eliminating a requirement that cities only build green space on floodplains. Costello explained, “Why not elevate the flood plains and put houses and businesses on top of them? We can expand our tax base and make people better off at the same time.” As of this article’s publication, FEMA had not accepted Houston’s offer. FEMA declined the HPR’s requests for comment.

People living in these communities are often stymied by inefficiency as well. Frustrated by the federal government’s lack of progress, Jeff Kalpin, a construction contractor in Houston, set up a Facebook group with other organizers shortly after Hurricane Harvey. The online community is coordinating grassroots recovery efforts in the area. “People volunteered trucks and manpower from their businesses, and everyone worked together.

You had people just step up into leadership and management roles and make amazing things happen every day,” Kalpin told the HPR. “What I walked away with from this experience, is that neighbors and residents can often be far more effective in mobilizing efforts because the lack of bureaucracy and chain of command.”

It’s easy to get wrapped up in numbers and statistics, forgetting that people are impacted in a very real way by decisions leaders make in the relative safety of government offices. Kalpin is still haunted by those realities every day: “I still get emotional when I drive through neighborhoods to see people’s lives stacked on the curb like trash. To me it represents the thing we often take for granted; our home and everything in it. I am in neighborhoods every day that are lined as far as you can see in all directions with those people’s lives still stacked up on the curbs.”

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WE(CHAT) THE PEOPLE

TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL CONTROL IN CHINA

Hillary McLauchlin

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here’s no Skype, no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram. We use WeChat,” opens the viral hit “WeChat,” by the up-and-coming Chinese rap group Higher Brothers. The song goes on to poke fun at the dynamics of social media relationships: “Ayo, tell me your WeChat number.”

The social media platform WeChat, owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings, Inc., no longer simply fills China’s void of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, but has become a cultural force and institution in its own right. Boasting around 938 million monthly users and accounting for 30 percent of China’s mobile usage, WeChat has found ways to infiltrate all corners of Chinese society on an unparalleled scale.

WeChat cultivated a base of devotees who use its services to do everything from messaging friends and posting photos to calling cabs and paying for meals. In the process, the platform has drawn the attention of the Chinese government. A veritable “superapp,” WeChat combines the popular services and collects a staggering amount of human data in the process—all of which is made accessible to the state.

At first, the rise of social media in China provided more opportunities for open expression and political organization—a powerful threat to the Communist Party’s power and its vision for social stability. However, these services now provide the government with an unprecedented glimpse into the lives of Chinese citizens—what they discuss, how they spend money, and where they gather.

Rather than providing a forum for open political expression, WeChat has become a tool for the consolidation of the Chinese government’s power.

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FROM WEIBO TO WECHAT Ya-Wen Lei, an assistant professor of sociology at Harvard, emphasized the importance of understanding WeChat’s place in the evolution of China’s online sphere in an interview with the HPR. Prior to the popularity of WeChat, the Chinese microblogging site Sina Weibo revolutionized Chinese social media by providing a platform for public discourse. In the late 2000s, with the rise of President Xi Jinping, the government cracked down on this form of expression by targeting influential public opinion leaders who utilized its services. China-watchers once hopeful for a new era of free speech in the country soon became disenchanted.

Government monitoring of the first generation of social media influencers, and differences in the two platforms’ features (WeChat’s emphasis is on more personal, closed social circles), have prevented individuals from spreading opinions or mobilizing on WeChat to the same extent as on Weibo.

“Scholars often talk about the rise of the internet leading to decentralization, but the Chinese government is very clever.

They kind of use social media and the design of technology to really recentralize,” said Lei. “[WeChat] is actually a centralization of a lot of things in your daily life, so it’s actually become easier for the government to monitor and oversee.”

Much like the government, WeChat has pushed to centralize technology with its continuous integration of new features.

Created by Chinese gaming company Tencent in 2011, WeChat first gained popularity as a dating app, allowing users to identify those nearby. Since then, it has expanded its messaging features,

developed an AI lab in Seattle, and has begun to dip its toes into the rapidly expanding mobile health insurance industry. WeChat has even introduced a “mini-program” feature that allows developers to build apps within the WeChat app—decreasing the need for app stores and downloads outside of WeChat.

One of the app’s most popular features is WeChat Pay, a mobile payment service. WeChat Pay has “grown organically from micropayments to offline payments” as phones have replaced wallets in major Chinese cities, according to Matthew Brennan, WeChat expert and founder of the platform’s largest marketing conference. WeChat is betting on its nearly 200 million WeChat Pay users to expand its ecommerce services to include full-fledged mobile banking, a potential threat to stateowned and traditional banks.

With a vast amount of data at stake, critics have often called WeChat’s privacy policies into question. According to Brennan, “In terms of government access to data in China, there’s government access if they [the government] request such access.” This policy applies not only to WeChat, but also to other Chinese platforms. However, Tencent is more restrictive than many U.S. technology companies in sharing data with third parties, such as marketers. Furthermore, user data from WeChat app usage outside of China is routed through servers outside of the Chinese mainland, and therefore does not fall under Chinese legal jurisdiction.

An Xiao Mina, a technologist and fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, described how WeChat’s level of encryption differs from that of its U.S. counterparts in an interview with the HPR. While many U.S. tech companies lack access to certain user data, and therefore are unable to share it with the government, WeChat has no such limit, which enables increased government surveillance and intervention. The stakes of censorship have risen as uncooperative individuals face visits from Chinese officials or arrest.

“The controls on the internet have gotten much stricter and many of them are designed specifically to curb virility—it is much more difficult now to participate in much larger, viral projects,” says Mina.

BEHIND THE GREAT FIREWALL Government access to data collected by WeChat has implications that extend beyond its capacity to censor information. For example, WeChat includes a “heat map” feature in major Chinese cities that shows the density of foot traffic in a particular area, based on its location-tracking abilities. This information, when utilized by the government, can indicate potential protests or areas that might require additional security to maintain order.

WeChat also serves as an effective tool for shaping public opinion. China’s traditional wu mao (five cent army)—a body of Chinese citizens paid by the government to post online in favor of the Communist Party—has been usurped by a new set of “public opinion analysts.” These new, more sophisticated analysts often have technological backgrounds and work for media organizations, universities, and private companies. According to Lei, the analysts “use technology like big data analysis and cloud computing to increase the level of surveillance” and write reports for the government.

As indicated in a study by the University of Toronto’s CitizenLab, the Chinese government has continued to crack down on online sentiment using increasingly sophisticated censorship measures. For example, citizens are no longer informed if their content is censored, and the number of censored words varies by the number of users that a post can reach.

Memes, as well as phrases with double meanings, are often employed as mechanisms for evading censorship on WeChat, but have recently caught the attention of the Chinese government.

This past summer, even Winnie the Pooh became an object of the government’s censorship after the spread of a meme likening President Xi to the storybook character.

According to Mina, “The government is starting to put together a real name registration and setting up a social credit system to tie one’s online activity to one’s physical identity.

This makes it much more difficult to participate in that [meme] culture.”

Though government intervention in the social media realm has at times been overt—the Party has limited VPN services in China, for example—the state has also exercised power more surreptitiously, pressuring Tencent to accept modifications to WeChat policy. In September, WeChat initiated policy changes that hold the creators of WeChat groups responsible for their content. This change led to widespread “self-censoring” as these creators, fearful of punishment for the content generated by their groups, deleted them. Ahead of the 19th National Party Congress, WeChat users’ ability to change aspects of their profile was frozen to prevent the expression of strong political sentiments.

THE NEXT GENERATION Despite this crackdown, Mina sees a dichotomy between increased monitoring and non-political forms of expression for China’s younger generation. “On one hand, there are very strong trends of clamping down on speech. On the other hand, you do see a very vibrant youth culture online that is actively talking about social issues. So as long as they don’t cross the line, it can be a very lively space.”

As China’s younger generation has embraced WeChat, the government has taken notice. However, ties between Chinese technology companies and the government often balance precipitously between contention and cooperation. Even as it faces strict fines and regulations from the government, Tencent produces overtly-propagandist mobile games. In one such game, the player watches President Xi give a speech and tries to clap as much as possible. While the government recognizes the dangers of the spread of illicit memes on WeChat, it also has expressed interest in becoming a shareholder in technology companies like Tencent.

The Chinese government’s interest in Tencent indicates the potential it sees in harnessing WeChat’s data and technology to maintain control. As the Communist Party seeks ways to gain relevancy among China’s younger generation—which does not remember the period of opening and reform that legitimized the government for the previous generation—it need look no further than their cell phones.

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LAW AND JUSTICE Harnessing the right to curb foreign influence Natalie Dabkowski

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ithin the West, the recent rise of right-wing populist parties has heightened concerns about the potential for foreign interference in the democratic process.

In a common telling of events, parties like the National Front in France, Alternative for Germany, and the Austrian Freedom Party function as a Russian fifth column, the frontline in a conflict between Eastern destabilization and Western liberal democracy.

In Poland, however, the ruling Law and Justice Party has proven a notable exception. Since coming to power in 2015, Law and Justice has pursued a staunchly Eurosceptic and simultaneously anti-Russian platform, making a conscious effort to build a state resistant to foreign influence. The party’s successes demonstrate that populist parties do not have to be an instrument of foreign intervention, but can instead serve to strengthen state autonomy and ensure greater political transparency.

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RUSSIA: HISTORICAL DIVISIONS In recent years, Europe’s right-wing populist movement has become a target for Russian meddling. Seeing an opportunity to cultivate potential ideological allies in the West, Russia has promoted right-wing parties through both financial and media support. The populist National Front in France received an ¤11 million loan from Russian sources, and in Germany, Russian state television galvanized support for conservative opposition parties through the spread of misinformation about an alleged rape in Berlin.

In Poland, however, the right-wing’s relationship with Russia has been markedly more antagonistic. In spite of meddling attempts, the dominant right-wing Law and Justice party has endeavored to reduce Russian influence and promote state autonomy and independence. Richard Lourie, author and former

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consultant on Russia to Hillary Clinton in her 2008 campaign, told the HPR that Poland is “a special case” in the world of right-wing movements. Owing to its traditionally-antagonistic relationship with Russia, he said, “Poland is probably inoculated against Russian propaganda to some degree.”

This hostility has resulted in a variety of policies designed to curb Russia’s influence in Poland. Fearing political infiltration, the government has accused Mateusz Piskorski, leader of the pro-Russian far-right Zmiana party, of working for Russian intelligence services. In 2016, he was arrested on espionage charges, and investigations were conducted into other party members. Furthermore, as Russia has promoted anti-Ukrainian groups in Poland and harkened to historical conflicts between Poland and Ukraine, the Law and Justice government has distinguished between historical conflict and shared economic and defense aims, committing itself to energy independence and support for Ukraine, through a ¤1 billion currency swap and the acceptance of over one million Ukrainian migrants.

Law and Justice has capitalized on Poland’s historical tensions with Russia to effectively implement, as former Prime Minister Leszek Miller once said, a “political doctrine of Russophobia.” Instead of emphasizing shared conservative values and communist nostalgia, as have other Eastern European conservative parties, Law and Justice has highlighted the darker moments in the Russo-Polish relationship. For example, the party recently opened a new investigation into the 2010 Smolensk plane crash that resulted in the death of the then Polish president, casting doubt on the integrity of Russian investigative findings. It has also passed a decommunization law with the intention of removing all former Soviet symbols from the Polish landscape, and sought to purge the military of communist influence. In this way, Law and Justice has utilized a very specific national historical narrative, one that antagonizes and opposes Russia, to reduce Russian influence in the country.

This calculated emphasis on particular historical narratives indicates that the right-wing, though often invested in history, is not exclusively bound to one perspective of events. Polish conservatives have chosen a historical narrative that cuts Russia from the national picture, thereby inoculating the country from Russian cultural and political influence. Instead of pandering to foreign influences, Law and Justice has endeavored to bolster an independent national identity.

WESTERN EUROPE: A QUESTION OF SOVEREIGNTY Russia, however, is not the only outside force with a political presence in Poland. Since the end of the Cold War, Western influence has slowly been on the rise. In 2014, former Polish politician Pawel Piskorski disclosed reports indicating that in the 1990s, during a critical state-building era in Poland’s history, politicians in the German Christian Democratic Union provided financial backing to the Polish Liberal Democratic Congress. More recently, Germany, along with the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, financed left-wing organizations like the Democratic Action Foundation. Western influence also extends to the media: over 138 Polish publications and magazines are foreign-owned. German media group Bauer is the owner

of Poland’s largest independent broadcaster, while German Verlagsgruppe Passau GmbH oversees over 20 Polish publications, creating ample opportunity for foreign editors to shape the media environment in the country.

Law and Justice has emphasized a clear national identity to counter this foreign influence. For example, the government is now pushing a media law that limits the amount of foreign capital in Polish media companies, along with the concentration of foreign media sources in Poland. This effort at “re-polonization” extends to the economy, where Law and Justice has emphasized increasing Polish leadership in the market, challenging a foreign-centered model where over half of Polish production and two thirds of Polish exports come from companies grounded in foreign capital. The government has also bought foreign banks, bolstered national investment, and created preferential programs for Polish entrepreneurs.

Moreover, Law and Justice has advocated for Polish sovereignty in a European context, pushing back against the broadening reach of the European Union. The party has consistently advocated limiting the scope of E.U. legislation, opposing policies for Syrian refugee acceptance on the grounds of national sovereignty. Poland also chairs the Visegrad Group, which is increasingly a vehicle for resistance to Western-centric European governance. This commitment to national autonomy even trumps support for Polish E.U. officials; when Donald Tusk, president of the European Union and former Polish prime minister, advocated for migrant acceptance and galvanized foreign criticism of Poland’s domestic policies, Law and Justice withdrew Poland’s vote for him for the presidency of the Council.

A RIGHT MOVE TO THE RIGHT? Of course, a fine line exists between resisting foreign influence and embracing isolation, and the initiatives of the Law and Justice government could leave Poland devoid of international allies in the future. Having spurned both cooperation with Russia, its primary military threat, and France and Germany, its central economic allies, Poland looks mostly to the Central European Visegrad Group for international solidarity, which is itself fractured by different political aims among member-states.

In this way, if its aggressive support of nationally-focused policies creates vulnerabilities in its economic and political network, Poland may not be recover on its own.

Furthermore, Law and Justice policy may contribute to the general inefficacy of the European system. Lourie cautioned against Polish separation from the West: “A lurch to the right puts Poland and Hungary at odds with Brussels, and fits in exactly within the general Russian view of destabilization.” Poland, by sacrificing closer European ties, risks creating an opening for distrust and conflict within the European Union.

Nevertheless, the culminating effect of Law and Justice policies has been one of advanced Polish autonomy. By rejecting foreign political interventions, the government has provided Poland with a broader platform to assert its political and economic perspectives free of outside pressures, an exceptional opportunity in an increasingly globalized world. It is now up to Law and Justice to direct and shape the autonomy it has generated in a direction that will benefit and strengthen Poland.

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YEMEN A Battleground for Competing Foreign Interests Connor Schoen

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hile the world’s eye is turned towards Syria and Iraq, Thus, the grave humanitarian crisis in Yemen worsens as a the planet’s largest humanitarian crisis rages just byproduct of an international battle fought on Yemeni soil. Even to the south: the Yemeni Civil War. With the World though the situation on the ground reflects the deep-seated Food Program reporting that two-thirds of Yemenis—almost 17 tensions between warring groups, the severity of the conflict is million people—are in a “crisis” or “emergency” food situation, greatly augmented by foreign military support. the breadth and severity of the issue transcends the bloodshed on the battlefield.

AN OVERVIEW OF THE CONFLICT Since the inception of the civil war in 2015, over 10,000 civilians have died, over 40,000 have been injured, and over 10 Hadi, who became vice president of the conflict-ridden million are in need of “urgent assistance” according to the U.N. nation in 1994, rose to power directly following the deposition Humanitarian Aid Office. Nevertheless, while the Hadi regime of late President Ali Abdullah Saleh during the Arab Spring. maintains control of the Aden governance, the Houthi-Saleh His single-candidate election in early 2012 was followed forces—with the support of Iran—hold significant power in nine by a National Dialogue Conference to extend his power. governances and are contesting power in six others. Moreover, This triggered intense resentment from Houthis, who allied terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian themselves with ex-President Saleh. Ultimately, in September Peninsula, the Yemeni branch of the self-proclaimed Islamic 2014, greatly dissatisfied with the results of an earlier peace State, and other localized powers have begun to exploit the accord, the Houthi-Saleh forces captured the Yemeni capital of chaos to fulfil their own objectives.

Sana’a and began to advance towards other areas of the country.

Despite the horrors of the current situation, there is still hope With nowhere else to turn, President Hadi and his allies for change. An official in the State Department, who wished to fled to Aden, a coastal city in southwest Yemen that borders the remain anonymous, expressed the U.S. government’s optimism Indian Ocean. Houthi-Saleh forces, supported by Iran, pursued that “eventually, both sides will be forced to the negotiating him and attempted to lay siege to Aden in March of 2015, but air table, and the United States will do anything [they] can to supstrikes from the newly-created Saudi-led coalition were able to port the U.N. Special Envoy in this process.” deter Houthi forces. According to Asher Orkaby, a PhD candiOverall, the violence and destruction in Yemen remains endate in the Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, “even as tangled in a larger battle of competing foreign interests. Namely, Mr. Hadi’s domestic support [dwindled], he [was] internationally the Saudi-led coalition, supported by the United States and recognized as Yemen’s legitimate leader.” various members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, have been Following the fight for Aden, the United Nations Security Chad fighting to restore the legitimacy of the Hadi government, but Borgman Council adopted Resolution 2216, despite the abstention of Rusquestions remain as to their ulterior motives in this fight. In opsia. This authorized an arms embargo and a series of sanctions position, Iran has been aiding the Houthis, a Zaydi Shia political against the Houthis, and it elevated demands for these forces to insurgency, in their fight for increased power and influence. move out of captured areas. Nonetheless, the conflict persisted

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and intensified over the course of the next twelve months.

In April 2016, UN Special Envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, sought to resolve the conflict again by sponsoring bilateral talks between the Hadi government and their opposition, but the ceasefire that resulted was violated by both sides.

The political and military conflicts of the civil war have resulted in a worsening humanitarian crisis. The 27.4 million people of Yemen have been plagued by shortages of food and water, a rare cholera outbreak, extremely limited access to health care, a residential crisis, and a collapse of the banking industry.

Both sides of the conflict acknowledge that progress is hard to define, but, by almost any measure, it has been fairly limited.

Lentsch labeled Operation Golden Spear and other coalition efforts as a “massive failure on the part of the Saudis.” He claimed that they’ve achieved “virtually nothing” and continue to be guided by influences outside of this narrative of legitimacy.

While the United States has expressed a bit more optimism about the coming of a political solution, there is still no clear end in sight: “No one wants to see this last forever, but it is unclear when it’ll end.”

THE SAUDI-LED COALITION

MISSION, BRANDING, AND FOREIGN INFLUENCE

Despite major humanitarian concerns, both sides of the conflict continue to wage war. In January 2017, the Saudi-led, U.S.supported Operation Golden Spear began to take back much of the Red Sea coastline while cutting off Iranian access points and Houthi supply lines in the area.

Despite success in regaining Mokha port and making advances towards Hodeida port and Taizz, this operation resulted in the death of a U.S. Navy SEAL as well as many civilian casualties.

According to Zachary Lentsch, a Harvard PhD student in social anthropology studying Yemen, the situation in Hodeida is “absolutely atrocious” with local civilians struggling to gain access to essentials that they need to survive. Nevertheless, Saudi-led bombings of the port and local infrastructure persist.

According to the same U.S. State Department official, “the United States is urging both sides to provide unfettered humanitarian access, and the Houthis haven’t been very cooperative in this process either.” Moreover, the United States government continues to emphasize that the main objective of the Saudis in this pursuit is to protect their border and secure sharia in the governance of Yemen: “The United States supports the Saudis in this mission of protecting their border, and [they] will work with them to limit civilian casualties.”

However, as the civilian death count rises over 10,000, experts in foreign policy question the legitimacy of this mission and of U.S. support of the coalition. Namely, Lentsch claimed that “people see ulterior motives on part of the Saudis, the GCC, and the United States. Oil pipelines in Aden remain a largely untapped resource, and the Saudis—in many ways—are trying to make Yemen their political puppet once again.”

Thus, the questionable motives of the coalition have cast a shadow on the actions of the United States. President Trump’s recent $110 billion arms deal with King Salman of Saudi Arabia is seen as another strong sign of U.S. support. Noha Aboueldahab of the Brookings Institute claimed that this deal “is yet another example of the appalling lengths some will go in order to benefit from a lucrative war business without acknowledging the death and destruction that such deals cause” in an interview with the HPR. A U.S. State Department official called these arms deals “fairly routine,” and the U.S. believes it crucial for the Saudis to protect their border. However, according to CNN, Yemen has the second highest number of average firearms per 100 people; thus, the decision to provide more arms to the Saudis, many of which will end up in Yemen, has come under fire by international peace organizations and over 40 human rights groups.

The main opposition to the Saudi-led coalition, the HouthiSaleh forces, remain a prevailing force in this fight with backing from Iran. The United States sees this group as a “destabilizing force” but not a terrorist organization. However, according to Lentsch, the Houthis have actually “branded themselves as an anti-American, anti-imperialist, anti-modern movement.”

Moreover, Jeremy M. Sharp of the Congressional Research Service stated in an interview with the HPR that “in February 2017, Major General Qassem Soleimani of Iran reportedly pledged to increase Iran’s assistance to Houthi-Saleh forces.”

Since then, an increase in weapons shipments to Yemen has been verified along with the escalation of military support on the Saudi-led side.

Despite powerful international opposition to their rebellion efforts, the Houthis continue to retain control throughout much of Yemen. Most recently, they have limited the extent of progress of Operation Golden Spear in the governance of Taizz and throughout much of the eastern front of the Saudi-led coalition.

Nevertheless, as Saleh begins to lose the support of many Houthis, the strength of this group’s ideological unity is in danger. According to Lentsch, there is “a unified opposition to the Saudis” among all of the Houthi-Saleh forces, but misgivings about Saleh’s leadership and the Zaydi Shia ideology have begun to fracture their strength.

ON THE GROUND IN YEMEN While the international perspective on this conflict remains crucial, the situation on the ground does not necessarily reflect the foreign conversation on this issue. Lentsch, who lived in Yemen as the conflict was erupting, stated that, “You don’t hear the narrative of legitimacy much in Yemen.” While the idea of sharia establishment and border protection pervades the rhetoric of the U.S. and Saudi governments, many Yemenis do not share this explanation as the true motive for the war. They see Hadi as “a non-factor,” and they perceive ulterior motives in the foreign powers who have implicated themselves in this civil war.

Moreover, the domestic perception of both sides, according to Lentsch, is often not that simple: “Many see the rebels as crooks, criminals, and terrorists, but they might also see the Houthi ideology as pure lunacy.” While many families have been torn apart by the ideological and political tensions rooted in this war, many others have also felt caught in the middle of a worthless fight where they can find solace in neither side.

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.The Road. .to the. .Middle Kingdom.

Perry Arrasmith

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M

arco Polo’s visit to the court of Kublai Khan irrevocably changed the way the Venetian merchant perceived the world. While residing in the court of the Khan, Polo likely learned that the name of the Khan’s dominion, ‘Zhongguo,’ translated into ‘Middle Country.’ “I tell you,” Polo wrote, “no day in the year passes that there do not enter the city 1,000 carts of silk alone, from which are made quantities of cloth and silk and gold, and of other goods.” With riches flowing into the Khan’s empire from the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and Central Asia, it was not wonder some truly thought it to be the center of the world.

Modern China is now embarking on a path reminiscent of the economic glory found in the times of the Khan. When the Nineteenth Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party opened in Beijing on October 18, 2017, China’s Paramount Leader Xi Jinping made a call for “a new era” where the nation would enter the international arena as a “leading global power.” This “new era” follows a period where China has continued to extend its influence on the world stage under Xi’s leadership.

Under Xi, The Belt and Road Initiative (initially known as the One Belt One Road Initiative) is poised to be one of the most important international endeavors ever undertaken by Chinese government. Through a series of infrastructure projects traversing both land and sea, China envisions a new economic system of cooperation built under their helm. If realized, the initiative could stand to change the political, economic, and cultural dynamics of the international community in the next century.

benefitted more than provinces in the interior. Within the four western-most provinces (Xinjiang, Tibet, Qinghai, and Gansu), a 2011 estimate found that the average per capita income was 3050 percent below the national mean. Through the BRI plan, rail lines that connect these provinces to Central Asia and Europe would develop these regions economically and encourage population growth, strengthening their vitality.

Economic development can also aid the Chinese government in establishing a more stable domestic scene while also bolstering its international clout. “By integrating their economic interests with their political might, China is setting itself up for the long haul; their intent is to establish an economic order which will challenge the status quo” said Peter Dutton, Director of the Chinese Maritime Institute at the Naval War College, in an interview with the HPR. China’s foreign policy has evolved largely in tandem with the economic reforms witnessed over the last three decades, and it may exert its foreign policy to protect economic interests.

CHINA’S FUTURE ON THE EURASIAN SUPERCONTINENT

The BRI has been divided into six separate land corridors and a maritime silk road, reaching many nations. The land corridors run throughout much of the Eurasian landmass, but additional connections have also been made throughout Africa, making future developments in the continent a strong possibility.

THE VISION: CHINA’S ROLE IN A NEW WORLD As President Xi told an audience in Kazakhstan in 2013, “a nearby neighbor is better than a close friend.” Countries along As outlined in an action plan released under the authority the historic silk road have benefitted especially from their of the State Council, there is a need to “carry on the Silk Road geographic importance. According to a November 2016 Heritage Spirit in the face of the weak recovery of the global economy, Foundation report, Central Asia has been a major recipient of and complex international and regional situations.” In seeking to economic attention, with China’s total investment overtaking increase global ties, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is defined Russia by over $20 Billion USD in 2013. Central Asia’s position as as “a systematic project, which should be jointly built through a land bridge between Asia and Europe and the Middle East has consultation to meet the interests of all, and efforts should be largely benefitted the region. made to integrate the development strategies of the countries China’s economic support for many of its neighbors in the along the Belt and Road.” south has won many allies. In June 2016, China signed a $5 Since 1980, the IMF has estimated that China’s GDP has Billion USD agreement with Thailand on the construction of grown at 10 percent annually. However, China’s growth rate has rail lines between the two countries. Other regimes throughsteadily declined since 2010, and fell to the lowest level in over out South East Asia like Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, and the 25 years in 2016.

Philippines also continue to receive offers for infrastructure With signs of a slowing economy, some experts believe that development. Foreign Direct Investment from China has already the BRI will enable China to continue their economic growth by reached nearly 30 percent of all investment in Thailand and 20 moving segments of their workforce into projects abroad. “Right percent in Malaysia. Every country carries with it a unique view now, China’s markets are highly saturated with a highly trained towards China, with political structures and national percepworkforce. For many, the BRI presents a welcome opportunity tions often determining how projects are received. to put these workers into markets which are not oversaturated,” For countries along the BRI route, balancing Chinese said Meg Rithmire, associate professor at Harvard Business offers with those from other countries has facilitated greater School. With many developing nations lacking the experts needcompetition. “If you have two economic powers trying to earn ed to construct major infrastructure projects, Chinese workers the influence of a developing country, that developing country have moved abroad to fill the gap. is going to have more to go on,” Rithmire told the HPR. While Drew Pendergrass Additionally, economic growth has not benefitted all parts researching Indonesia, Rithmire has found that “often times, of China equally. China’s coastal provinces of the east have the Chinese government will have to work within the bounds

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of local governments and respect local authority. More often than not, this is easier said than done.” Between other economic powers like the United States, Japan, and Korea, Chinese authorities appear to be joining a table where others are also sitting.

One curious example of this is currently developing in Vietnam. Competition between Japan and China in reaching out to developing countries is noticeable. In Vietnam, the Ho Chi Minh city’s subway system is currently being constructed by a Japanese Company, while the subway system in Hanoi is being constructed by a Chinese company. Locals have criticized both projects for various reasons, but the Chinese project has reportedly been wrought with less oversight, with even a local passerby being killed near a construction site. In contrast, Japan’s project has been noted for being comparably safer and more efficient.

NAVAL POWER: THE MARITIME SILK ROAD Beyond the influence China is already expected to accrue through the construction of its six major land corridors, the strategic construction of ports stretching from the Eastern China Sea to the Mediterranean adds to the BRI’s size and scope. China plans to unite ports in Europe, the Middle East, East Africa, Southeast Asia, Oceania, and East Asia all under one common framework.

One of the most important potential ports is located in Gwadar, Pakistan. As a part of the China-Pakistan corridor, the small city of 50,000 is set to be a major link between the Maritime Silk Road and the maritime commerce along the Arabian Sea. The project will provide mainland China with access through the city of Kashgar (in Xinjiang) to the global economy without having to pass the strait of Malacca or the coasts of India.

On the Horn of Africa, China’s decision to establish its first overseas military base in Djibouti was also precipitated by a $3.4 Billion USD investment in a railroad connecting the landlocked nation of Ethiopia to the port of Djibouti City. According to a January 2017 South China Morning Post article, the construction of the railway could be the first step of a larger 2000 Km railway which could eventually connect the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. In response to the development of new bases, other regional powers have attempted to respond with their own projects. Two neighbors with historically bad relations with China, Japan and India, announced the creation of an Asia-Africa corridor in May 2017. The plan could challenge Chinese investment plans and escalate competition between the powers.

VISITORS ON THE HOME FIELD: INTERNATIONAL IMPLICATIONS The emergence of new relationships is always bound to affect the nature of old ones. The BRI’s entrance into certain regions will undoubtedly affect current political issues. Whether

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it concerns spheres of influence or territorial claims, the clout China has exhibited through the BRI represents a new level of power from the nation.

Furthermore, the BRI raises questions of how the outside world will affect regions already on the fringes of what has traditionally been the Chinese nation. For example, Xinjiang, a territory in western China, has been a hotbed of Muslim extremism. With Kashgar and Urumqi— the two largest cities in Xinjiang—serving as major gates into the country from the West, the Chinese government has viewed an increase in Islamic Extremism as a threat to economic and political stability.

Regions historically controlled by the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union are also seeing a growing Chinese influence, as the Chinese government is lobbying for deals to expand railway lines into the territory. Infighting among members of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union, when combined with trade conflicts among various Central Asian States and Russia, have generated roadblocks for the Chinese.

However, rail lines continue to spring up along the Caucasus.

The construction of a line through Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey has been hailed by Turkish President Erdogan as a harbinger of future economic growth. The desire for rail lines into Europe has forced China to also wade into the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.

Due to its strategic location as a gateway into the European market, strong relations with the Ukraine would be a major prize for the Chinese government. With Russia dependent upon strong relations with China, it is unknown if China’s warming relations with Russia’s adversary will affect the status quo.

CHALLENGER ON THE WORLD STAGE The Trump administration currently lacks an answer to China’s rising global prominence. The Obama’s Administration’s Trans-Pacific Partnership was initially seen as a strong counter to the BRI, but the Trump Administration’s decision to withdraw from the TPP has largely destroyed any chances of countries having other options.

The post-Cold War Order dominated by a unipolar power– the United States–will need to contend with the rollout of policies such as the BRI, and with Chinese economic and militaristic growth. The emergence of China as a military power will challenge America’s military re-focus on the Asia theatre, and the establishment of maritime bases could complicate tensions in the South China Sea, where China currently faces rival claims from the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan—many American allies— over the same oceanic territory.

The impact of the BRI is impossible to gauge at this moment.

The initiative, still only an idea in some regions, remains largely uncertain. However, the project tells a larger story of China’s rise in this century. Chinese President Xi Jinping is now seen as the most powerful leader in the country since Mao. After suffering from foreign exploitation and internal turmoil for nearly two centuries, the BRI reflects a desire for a China to move into a future much in tune with its glorious past.

CULTURE

The Zealy Daguerre otypes Power and Possession Hadley DeBello and Esteban Arellano

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S

omehow, in the middle of the day, on our way to the Peabody Museum, we got lost. We travelled amidst a sea of indistinguishable red brick buildings, adorned with familiar names (Lowell, Agassiz, Bauer), and nestled in an expanse of endless lawns. We were only a few blocks from the main campus—the occasional map or Harvard logo told us so—yet with every step it felt as though we were walking further away from the world we knew.

Perhaps the obscurity of these objects spoke to their place here.

When we finally found the museum, our journey did not end.

Entering through old, heavy doors, we jumped through a series of curatorial hoops: we signed in, we tied up hair, we checked bags, we secured sunglasses. Finally, our guide led us through a discrete black gate into the bowels of the Peabody. Past sterile labs, museum artifacts, and storage facilities, we were led until we reached the room. Like a bank vault, the heavy door opened, revealing a sort of catacomb of white walls, sterile lights, locked cabinets, empty chairs, and a dozen small display stands supported on a table. As we entered the room, our guide gave us each a black cloth, instructed us to circle around the table, secured the entrance. Then she took her place next to our professor, Sarah Lewis, who had been waiting quietly for us.

Like a congregation in a church, our class, called “Vision and Justice,” had gathered to view an exhibit as part of the class’s focus on viewing of our nation’s racial history through the lens of aesthetic representation. We had come to this room to see the Zealy daguerreotypes. These pictures had been commissioned

by Louis Agassiz, one of America’s most prominent scientists, as evidence of black racial inferiority during the 19th century. But most importantly, these images once belonged to the collection of a Harvard professor and were now housed in a Harvard archive.

After running through a list of logistics (cough away from the objects, watch your hair, etc.), our guide allowed us to approach the table. Maintaining a safe distance, we held our black rags over the images to see the reflective surface (printed on silver).

Yet, it was not an easy feat: many were rendered invisible by age. And the ones that were still legible could only be seen from certain angles and in the absence of any white light. The elusive figures would escape our sight until we could finally find them in the cloak of our cloth.

Lewis’s voice—normally poised and brimming with care— turned cold and mechanical, systematically asking us to rotate between images at fixed intervals. For a brief moment the recognizable subjects would appear and stare through us as we

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examined them: Jack and his tears, Drana and her exposed torso.

“Rotate,” Lewis said. The figures disappeared back into silver oblivion.

“What we missed in lecture was a sense of intimacy,” Amir Hamilton, a student in the class, said. “You are able to get closer to the interiority of the people that are photographed.”

The daguerreotypes were commissioned in 1850 by the famed Harvard ethnologist, Louis Agassiz. A celebrated scientist on many fronts, Agassiz helped found the American School of Ethnology. The movement centered on the theory of polygenesis which argued that racial differences signified separate evolutionary tracks between races. Interpreted by the public, polygenesis provided the “irrefutable” evidence needed to justify racial hierarchy.

While Agassiz himself was a purported abolitionist, the careful language with which he prefaced the presentation of his scientific theories provides undisputable evidence that Agassiz was aware of the role his scientific theories played in pro-slavery ideology. As Agassiz wrote in 1850 in the Christian Examiner, “We disclaim, however, all connection with any question involving political matters. It is simply with reference to the possibility of appreciating the differences existing between different men, and of eventually determining whether they have originated all over the world and under what circumstances, that we have tried to trace some facts representing the human races.”

Whether or not a reflection of his own political views, Agassiz needed to articulate the debasement of African-Americans to prove his theory of race. Following a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held in Charleston, South Carolina in 1850, Agassiz recruited Joseph T. Zealy to help gather empirical data on the black body to substantiate his racial theory.

Capturing the images of Renty, Delia, Jack, Drana, Alfred, Fassena and Jem, among others, the Zealy daguerreotypes sought to create specimens out of the slave population of South Carolina. The systematic processing of the figures records their physiology from every angle. Front, back, and side profiles show naked, unflinching bodies. The directness of the subjects’ gazes challenges the customary deference expected of slaves, revealing a small assertion of individual agency. This defiance further dramatizes the powerlessness of the figures as they are forced to surrender their bodies to public scrutiny.

The Zealy images aim to create evidence of a racially inferior class. Careful to separate these works from contemporary portraits of white patrons––which featured elegant dress, accessories signifying wealth or intellect and a dignified, indirect

CULTURE

“In the decades following their creation, these images faded from the public consciousness. Rediscovered in a Harvard attic in 1974, the works have reemerged as some of the most incendiary evidence of scientific racism in American culture.”

gaze—Zealy’s half nude slaves are denied respectability and autonomy. Through the creation of these types, the subjective nature of photography is exploited to manufacture scientific data.

In the decades following their creation, these images faded from the public consciousness. Rediscovered in a Harvard attic in 1974, the works have reemerged as some of the most incendiary evidence of scientific racism in American culture.

In her series “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried,” artist Carrie Mae Weems contributes to this dialogue by contextualizing the Zealy daguerreotypes within a greater narrative. Overlaying enlarged copies of the photographs with inscriptions such as “FROM HERE YOU BECAME A SCIENTIFIC PROFILE” or “A NEGROID TYPE,” Weems returns humanity and consciousness to the photographic subject. Her prints carefully repurpose the Zealy daguerreotypes. The images of Renty, Delia, Jack and others are supplemented with gallery quality frames, colorful tints and narrative text.

The transformative power of Weem’s additions makes the viewer hyperconscious of the qualities that were stripped away from the subjects in the original images. By giving dignity back to her subjects, Weems further critiques the deplorable manner in which the artist, Zealy, denied it. “When we’re looking at these images,” Weems noted in an interview with the Museum of Modern Art, “we’re looking at the ways in which Anglo America—white America—saw itself in relationship to the

black subject. I wanted to intervene in that by giving a voice to a subject that historically has had no voice.” In such a manner, Weems negotiates the complicated task of defining the identity of a subject without autonomy.

Yet, the conflict that Weems encountered when seeking to use the images captured by the Zealy daguerreotypes is illustrative of the unresolved status of these works. Harvard University, the owner of the Zealy Daguerreotypes, confronted Weems for her use of these images. Pushing the case to the brink of a lawsuit, the level of scrutiny placed upon Weems as an artist contrasts sharply with the unquestioned authority of Zealy when he exploited the original subjects. In a moment of irony, the commercial success of Weems’ piece resulted in the university dropping its claims and, instead, buying a few of the portraits for its museum. Yet, tensions persist. When working on this piece, the HPR encountered an unwillingness from representatives of both the Peabody Museum and “Vision and Justice” to talk about the daguerreotypes on record. The irresolution of Harvard University in its engagement with Weem’s work is indicative of the strain surrounding these images and their public dissemination. Moving forward, serious questions remain. As a private owner of these images, does Harvard have the right to limit or monetize their visibility? Or, as the Zealy daguerreotypes are uniquely poignant records of race in America, is there a historical claim that supersedes university interests?

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Replacing Newsfeeds for Newspapers The Detriments of Using Facebook for News

Jessica Boutchie

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hen Facebook began as an online directory for Harvard students in 2004, no one—not even founder Mark Zuckerberg—anticipated its use beyond forging college connections. Facebook, wrote Zuckerberg, was intended to help college students “understand what was going on in their world a little better.” Yet Facebook has since blossomed into a full-fledged social media site, and as of January 2017, approximately 81 percent of Americans have at least one social media profile—a 57 percent increase from 2008.

Beyond growth as a social media site, Facebook has seen another change: according to a Pew Research study from May 2016, the general public increasingly considers social media sites such as Facebook to be a source of news. Nearly 66 percent of Americans—and 44 percent of the general population of the United States—obtain news from Facebook.

More striking, however, is what this social media giant replaces; of users who receive news from Facebook, only 15 percent also consult newspapers for news. If Facebook is re-

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placing the most traditional form of news dissemination, one would hope that its quality is comparable. But, overwhelmed by an abundance of information, selective exposure, and ‘filter bubbles’, this new avenue for news may estrange or even polarize Americans long before it aids them.

‘INFOBESITY’ AND IMMEASURABLE VARIETY

The abundance of information available to Americans online constitutes a phenomenon known as “infobesity.” As Carlos Watson, founder and CEO of Ozy Media, told the HPR, the reality that “there’s just too much information online” and not all of it is helpful or even relevant.

On social media sites such as Facebook, a single political article may be lost among the less news-oriented posts from family and friends—while much information is present, only a small facet of it may be political. The average news feed, in fact,

CULTURE

consists of nearly 300 stories, both political and not—a result reached only after the Facebook algorithm consults between 1,500 and 15,000 stories in total.

The sheer number of stories encountered by every user is not the only problem, however—there is also the variety among users’ feeds. As Harvard Kennedy School professor Matthew Baum cautioned the HPR, “people have different constellations of ideologies amongst their friends and their social network,” and thus, those people control what content they see. While one set of users could present diverse and thoughtful information for their friends, explained Baum, another may present content that is “completely narrowcast and extremely limited in breadth.”

Or, as Watson highlighted, a large proportion of that which one might see in the newsfeed is “the big story of the day,” repeated “ad infinitum.” While Facebook may therefore trim the stories encountered by any one user to a manageable number, they, as a social media site, do little to control the content beyond consulting user preferences, reinforcing inconsistent exposure to a variety of political information.

A ‘HIGH-CHOICE MEDIA ENVIRONMENT’

Even with droves of information available, Americans are incentivized to limit what they consume. According to a 2005 paper from Princeton professor Markus Prior, in a high-choice media environment, “dramatic increases in available political information” do not coincide with noticeable changes in political engagement. While greater choice allows politically interested individuals greater access to more political knowledge, Prior wrote, those uninterested in politics “can more easily escape the news.”

This paper, though written over a decade ago, continues to be relevant. In an interview with the HPR, Prior confirmed that the media environment in the United States is still high-choice.

In fact, “there’s indisputably more choice,” as a result of the emergence of social media. What began as a problem with cable television and the early Internet has thus been exacerbated by the rise of social media as a news source—users unwilling to view news can simply keep scrolling.

An additional detriment of such plentiful choice, according to Prior, is that in a high-choice environment, chance encounters with any political content also declines. Americans no longer have to endure “a few minutes of cable news” before “something entertaining comes on,” Prior lamented to the HPR. As he wrote in the 2005 paper, a “lack of motivation, not lack of skills or resources, poses the main obstacle to a widely informed electorate.”

SELECTIVE EXPOSURE: A PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUE

A lack of political knowledge among the electorate is only one problem: when media choice increases, selective exposure results—individuals seek out information that confirms their own biases and avoid contradictory information. On Facebook,

users may—intentionally or unintentionally—limit their political awareness to only those ideologies and opinions held by their close friends. In choosing not to pursue political knowledge on social media, users may also choose not to encounter any opinions that may be contrary to their own. Social media thus represents, as Baum puts it, “a double-edged sword.”

Moreover, “if people are motivated to engage in selective exposure—meaning seeking out information sources that reinforce what they already believe or tell them what they believe is true— social media probably makes that easier,” Baum claims. Americans’ tendencies toward polarization “are likely to be reflected in their online social network.”

Still, political exposure in any form increases the likelihood of voting among the American electorate. For the approximately 44 percent of Americans who choose to receive some version of news on Facebook, then, it becomes a question of whether this exposure has positively impacted their voting preferences.

THE ‘PERFECT PERSONALIZED NEWSPAPER’

Beyond human choices, Facebook’s algorithms may also be to blame for increased partisanship and polarization. Mark Zuckerberg stated in 2013 that Facebook’s goal is to “build the perfect personalized newspaper for every person in the world.” However, this leads to the formation of communities of individuals with like ideas, known as “filter bubbles.” Through such bubbles, “the internet is showing us what it thinks we want to see, but not necessarily what we need to see,” said Upworthy CEO Eli Pariser in a recent TED talk.

Similarly, Watson argued that “if we are all in our own tribes or all in our own bubbles,” it may be more difficult for us to debate difficult issues. While such algorithms therefore increase Americans’ fondness for Facebook, they do little to increase one’s exposure to diverse political opinions, and in fact, they may even reinforce the aforementioned problems of selective exposure and polarization.

THE NEWSFEED VERSUS THE NEWSPAPER Ultimately, the newsfeed performs many functions that the newspaper could not—enhancing mobilization, fostering connectedness among geographically distant people, and allowing greater freedom of choice in the political information individual Americans receive. Yet the newsfeed also restricts American political awareness in ways that the newspaper never did. The newspaper refused to shield Americans from opinions contrary to their own, and prevented the politically uninterested from remaining that way.

Unfortunately for Americans, this trend toward the newsfeed remains, as Prior revealed, “so different than everything we have seen until very recently,” to the point that Prior himself is “not quite sure what to make of it.” In the United States and abroad, both the benefits and the detriments of utilizing social media as a news source have yet to be specifically measured. The forecast, however, is ominous.

WINTER 2017 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 39

Mika Brzezinski & Joe Scarborough Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough are the co-hosts of Morning Joe on MSNBC. Mika Brzezinski was the principal reporter for CBS during the 9/11 attacks. She joined MSNBC in 2007. She has written three books, launched a campaign against trivial journalism, and is an advocate on behalf of women’s empowerment.

Joe Scarborough started his career as a lawyer and served as a Republican representative for Florida’s first congressional district from 1995 to 2001. After resigning, he worked in environmental law and launched an MSNBC talk show in 2003 before starting with Morning Joe four years later.

40 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW WINTER 2017

INTERVIEWS

with Connor Schoen Your show is often critiqued for having a liberal bias. What do you do to limit bias on the show and allow for multiple perspectives?

Mika Brzezinski: It’s hard to really limit bias, but what you can do to control it is [maintain] a sense of objectivity and openness towards different points of view. The show begins with Joe and me. He is a Republican-turned-independent, and I’m a Democrat, and everybody knows that. It’s not unusual to have people who disagree, but we’re very transparent about it in every conversation that we have. There are biases that you don’t even know sometimes that you’re exuding, so that’s where the conversation and the debate help.

Joe Scarborough: The most critical thing is that, for us, we try to always make sure that there is not an echo chamber, that we don’t have five people talking to each other saying the same things. Sometimes, that means having more Republicans on the set than Democrats, and sometimes it’s the opposite. Like Mika said, the key is the transparency. None of us are sitting there trying to play the voice of God and pretending that we’re objective because nobody is.

What are the challenges of covering President Trump since his flurry of Twitter comments against you?

MB: No different. We’re not surprised. We know him, and [his tweets] don’t bother us. I will say that I’ve seen him bully on Twitter before, and it’s been atrocious, and it’s been disturbing, and when it sort of pricked me, I realized that, oh my God, this guy is unhinged. He’s so easily played, and he’s now tweeting at me about my facelift surgery, bleeding from a facelift, or whatever he said. I just [think] it is disturbing that our president is doing this.

JS: One thing we did consciously do that we don’t usually do is that we sat and talked about how we were going to be on the show the following week, and just said we had to guard against appearing to be personally angry and showing the personal animus. Even though we didn’t take it personally because we know him, we understood that everybody inside and outside the White House would be watching this more carefully. We did need to be a bit more careful and guard our words a bit more than usual. We don’t like guarding our words.

Joe, how do you think the Republican Party has changed since you signed the Contract for America in 1994, and what pushed you to leave the party?

Eisenhower, Reagan, and Jeb Bush as governor: people who were moderate temperamentally but conservative fiscally. When I left Congress in 2001, we had a balanced budget. In fact, we had a surplus. Eight years later after Republicans controlled Washington, we had a trillion-dollar deficit, the national debt had doubled, and there was a lot of reckless spending. I held on because I didn’t mind fighting the good fight when it had to do with fiscal responsibility because I thought, and I still believe, that time is on my side and that at some point that is going to become such a looming problem that Washington is going to have to be responsible.

The problem came with the racist attacks that Donald Trump launched and that so many Republicans remained silent after he proposed the Muslim ban. After he attacked a Mexican judge who was from Indiana, who was a Hoosier, and the insensitivity shown towards Mexicans at the beginning of the campaign, towards Gold-Star moms simply because they were Muslims, and shown towards just about everybody who wasn’t white concerned me. Of course, Charlottesville was extraordinarily disturbing as were the President’s comments. At the end of the day, I couldn’t stay in a party that continued to defend Donald Trump when he continued to say things that were either racially insensitive or downright racist.

Mika, you’ve launched a campaign against what you call “trivial journalism.” In the age of “alternative facts,” what reforms do you think are necessary in mainstream media?

MB: Facebook needs to understand that it’s a news organization or a media organization. I think that there are many constructs out there—search engines, whatever you want to call them—and they’ve all become a part of this strange strainer that is the way people get news.

They don’t get news the way people did when we were growing up. It was from three networks and a couple of newspapers and that was it. Now, it’s just everywhere, and you don’t even know what’s news and what’s not. People search things and think that’s news. They have no concept of how to collate this stuff.

We’re in for a rough ride over the next two decades, trying to get to the other side of this where there is some parameter in place or regulation. I’m not really sure what it’s going to look like, but this is going to come to a head, and it’s going to get worse, where either it’ll lead to violence or something that is caused by misinformation. We’re going to have to install some parameters in what is the Wild West of Internet news, information sites, and search engines.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

JS: It’s changed in all the wrong ways. My role models were

WINTER 2017 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 41

INTERVIEWS

with Marty Berger

Roger Stone with Humberto Juรกrez Rocha

42 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW WINTER 2017

INTERVIEWS

Roger Stone is an American political consultant and strategist whose work spans back to the Nixon administration. In 2017, Netflix published the documentary “Get Me Roger Stone.”

people buying tickets to see you or [voting for you]. The only thing worse in politics than being wrong is being boring. And Donald Trump is never boring.

What are your thoughts on the current administration?

What is power to you?

I have come to this conclusion that we are witnessing a slowmotion coup by the deep state, the very people that opposed the presidential election. They have used illegal and unconstitutional leaks to destabilize [Trump’s] presidency. The generals have pretty much taken control of the White House and are seeking to isolate the president and limit his access to information. I am surprised how much he does not know. Unfortunately, he seemed, in his efforts to unite the country, to have hurt a lot of people who are not anti-interventionist and who do not share his views on trade or immigration. I think in many ways, he is getting undermined.

Power is the ability to bring change and do good things. To have power, one must have a constituency, a coalition. First, one has to be able to keep the constituency intact, not have it fissure over less important issues. Then, you have to be able to mobilize it. For example, I think it would be an egregious mistake for the president to abandon this commitment on states’ rights to legalize marijuana and to give in to Jeff Sessions and General Kelly who want to essentially reignite the war on drugs. The war on drugs was proven to be an expensive, racist and ignominious failure. It has not worked. The idea that we would return to those policies is inconsistent with what he said during the campaign and it would cause a fissure in the more libertarian elements of his constituency.

You mention Conscience of a Conservative [by Barry One of Trump’s promises was to “drain the Goldwater] as a book that motivated you to enter swamp”. He’s put a lot of Goldman [Sachs] people politics. in the administration. What do you think of that?

That was the seminal event that made me decide to enter politics. My next-door neighbor was a very active Republican Club woman. She gave me a copy of that paperback book and I was transfixed.

There is a new version of that book by Arizona Senator Jeff Flake. Have those values changed, and have you abided by those values?

I actually turned back to them. I started out as a more conventional conservative. Over time I, certainly during the time I worked for Nixon, embraced a more moderate, pragmatic brand of conservatism. But then again post-Romney, I returned to my libertarian roots. I want government out of the boardroom and out of the bedroom. I want a government that is inexpensive, that believes in the concept of peace through strength as opposed to the concept of going around the world looking for trouble and foreign wars when our national interest is just not there. I would say that my views have evolved.

You also mentioned that politics is kind of like acting, acting for ugly people. Are there differences between politics and theatrics?

This may prove to be a fatal mistake, in all honesty. I don’t know why he would hire anyone that worked for George W. Bush—some of the people in the State Department and some in the cabinet. Some of the people whom he has hired, while they have fine credentials on paper, I wonder if he really understands their pedigree. You have to construct a government that has like-minded people who support your agenda and this is, I think, the greatest danger he faces. If he can become isolated from the neocons and the internationalists around him, they are going to continue the policies we have had for the last 30 years which are essentially endless war, without our national interests being clear, erosion of our civil liberties, massive debt, a broken immigration system, and trade agreement that are sucking jobs out of America. That is the legacy of the Bush and Clinton administrations and there are people who have clearly voted to go in a different direction.

On the subject of legacy, what are you hoping for yours to be?

I would like people to say I made a difference with true political action and radical change.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Politics is show business for ugly people. They are both about being interesting. Whether you’re an actor or you’re a politician, you have to capture the imagination and the audience. It is either

WINTER 2017 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 43

ENDPAPER

A NIGHT IN NAPLES Sam Plank

O

n the way back from the concert, we barely spoke. It was clear that the elderly man in the front seat who was driving Bryan and I was hard of hearing, and we only managed to get across our names and where we grew up.

Bryan and I were on tour with the Harvard Glee Club through the American South, and were being hosted by Mr. Donovan at his condo in Naples, Florida. We made it to his home, where he showed us in and set us up for the night. He was well into his 80’s but he parked himself on the couch so that Bryan could have his bed.

Mr. Donovan, in an effort to break the ice, had bought us some Lay’s potato chips and a six-pack of Corona. We sidled out to to his back porch and sat on lawn chairs under the overhead fan. It was only March, but it’s hot in Florida in March.

The conversation started off slow. We talked about Mr. Donovan’s year at Harvard getting a degree in government decades ago. During his time in Cambridge, he bought an album of Glee Club songs and memorized all of them. A couple of hours earlier at our concert, he had been humming them out in the audience. He told us about his girlfriend who lived down the road in the next housing complex.

My first year at Harvard, I took many things for granted.

I had worked hard to earn a spot in the freshman class, and I hadn’t done much looking back. As far as I was concerned, when I stepped into Harvard Yard, I was entering a new phase of my life that would be completely distinct from the one I was leaving behind.

The experiences I had freshman year largely confirmed that I was in a new world. One professor had just been named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People for her work fighting Ebola in West Africa. In another class, I sat across from the son of the CEO of Goldman Sachs. I started writing for the Harvard Political Review, and people all over the world were reacting to my thoughts and opinions.

Within the flurry of freshman year, I began losing my grounding. I saw my parents over winter break, but I felt like we were living in disconnected worlds. Some narcissistic part of me was even a little bit proud about it. In my mind, I was doing it all on my own.

As the beer bottles emptied, the conversation loosened up. Bryan spoke about how his parents had immigrated to the United States from South Korea and had to work a series of odd jobs before opening their own furniture store. They had spent countless hours selling recliners and ottomans to provide him with opportunity. When he graduated, he wanted to be able to

44 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW WINTER 2017

spend time with them. He felt like he had to make up for lost time from his youth when his parents were busy keeping the family afloat.

Mr. Donovan told us that there had been tragedy in his family, and that he had to step in to help support his children and grandchildren. In the twilight of his life, it gave him satisfaction to be able to take care of his family. He kept the pictures his grandkids sent in the mail pinned up on the refrigerator.

Mr. Donovan turned to me and asked what was on my mind.

I hadn’t said anything in a long time, and I was sitting there reflecting on all that I had heard. Listening to them both speak with such sincerity and earnestness moved me. Bryan, who was about to begin his adult life, and Mr. Donovan, at the end of his, both centered themselves around their families. When was the last time that I had fully considered the impact of my parents on me?

Like a flood, memories came pouring out and showed themselves to me.

Through the haze of pre-dawn, I heard my mom saying goodbye to me every morning at 6 a.m. as she left for her two hour commute. She supported the family selling fabric at a company where women were not promoted off the sales floor.

She came home every night, bone-tired, and still found the energy to talk with me about whatever idea was floating around in my head.

I felt little flecks of sawdust hit against my skin as my dad taught me to how to cut two-by-fours on a table saw. We were building a treehouse out back. The paragon of resourcefulness, he rounded up a slew of cedar branches from the woods to fashion into a railing. When I wanted to see how the experts built their treehouses, he drove me to the library and helped me pour over book after book on the subject.

I saw both of my parents dropping me off for my freshman year of college, after spending 18 years supporting me in every endeavor. Through selflessness and love, they had made it possible for me to follow my dreams of going to Harvard.

The housing complex’s sprinkler system turned on, and our conversation wound down. The next day, we packed up and went on our way to the next stop on the tour. While it has now been two years since I have seen Bryan or Mr. Donovan, that night sticks with me. Listening to their stories sparked a change in the way that I see my own. Though sometimes I still feel like I live in a different world than my family, I remember where I am from and how the lessons I learned landed me here.

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